


black sails on the horizon

by wytch-lyghts (flight_on_broken_wings)



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Alternate Universe - Pirate, Black Sails AU/inspo, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, M/M, Neutral Evil Characters, Pirates, rating WILL change ;)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-08
Updated: 2020-09-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:41:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25152592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flight_on_broken_wings/pseuds/wytch-lyghts
Summary: On the deck of a pirate ship stood a runaway mage, her Captain. And beside him, his crew. Their quarry, an elusive Empire vessel bearing valuable cargo to Xhorhas. Valuable enough to end a war. Or fetch a bounty of a size that kings are made of, depending on whose hands delivered it.Would it be personal, or merely political, if Captain Widogast didn’t want that war to end? Not like that. Personal, or political, for the desperate sailor, Fjord, who put himself so unknowingly in his path? Or for the rival Revelry Captain whose strange sea god has an interest in both of them?A/N: A concept piece loosely based on season one of the TV series Black Sails; I’ll continue it, my schedule and my outstanding WIP allowing, and reader interest encouraging.
Relationships: Beauregard Lionett & Caleb Widogast, Fjord/Caleb Widogast, Jester Lavorre/Beauregard Lionett (minor)
Comments: 25
Kudos: 61





	1. I.

The call went out – “ _ Brace yourselves!”  _ – the quartermaster’s shout somehow breaking through the encroaching sound of cannon fire and the panicked din of the crew rushing to secure the rigging, the sails on their one remaining mast straining with the weight of their full haul, dragging low through the water.

Fjord threw himself to the deck, his hands pressed hard over his ears.

The ship shuddered violently beneath him, hull and railing exploding in a maelstrom of wood and metal shrapnel as the next wave of cannon fire raked the Ophelia stem to stern. It wasn’t the crack and splinter of wood that Fjord was trying to block out though. It was the screams. 

His ears ringing, Fjord grit his teeth almost painfully against the nausea that washed over him as the sea water crashing over the splintered sides of the ship ran frothy red across the deck scattered with bodies of fallen crew members. Some still bleeding out, some he recognized, some he couldn’t – and not just because this was only his third run with the merchant vessel. 

But Fjord wasn’t dying here. Not for some Captain he’d barely met, or for some rich fucks up north their cargo was destined for. Not if he could help it. 

He shoved himself up to his hands and knees, keeping low, breathing hard as he peered over the bilge barrels that had managed to stay tied in place to the railing. His stomach dropped, dread welling up cold and paralyzing in his chest.

The pirate ship loomed closer. 

Since the Ophelia’s main mast had splintered and cracked damn near in half, the sails still trailing in the water over the port side, the ambushing vessel had managed to overtake them completely, rounding in front of her bow.

Fjord hadn’t caught the name on the ship, but it was a beautiful vessel, he’d admit. And plenty terrifying. There was an elegantly carved dragon’s head at the bowsprit of the large galleon, with a crimson flag displayed proudly atop the mast that he didn’t recognize, emblazoned in black with a half sun rising. Not to mention the two decks of cannons which had no difficulty tearing them to pieces before they’d even mustered up a return fire. And now, with her sails pulled in, she coasted to a near halt right in the Ophelia’s path. 

They were so close now he could  _ see  _ the pirates on her deck and climbing down from the rigging, armed to the teeth, jeering and shouting across the waves. Their cannons had stopped firing, Fjord realized, as they flooded above deck in preparation to board the Ophelia at the bow and roll right over them.

There was a loud crack, a streak of fire from the upper deck of the pirate ship, and then an explosion Fjord felt in his chest rocked the top of the deck over the bow, burning bright enough and high enough to scorch the Ophelia’s torn sails. Fjord ducked low again, closing his eyes tightly. He chose to think the crew up there had been flung overboard, that it was the turpentine and pitch burning, not his fallen crewmates. 

The quartermaster survived though, a surly old man who’d made it clear he’d brought Fjord on out of pity more than anything else. Fjord heard him crying out,“ _ To the rails! All hands at arms, to the rails!”  _ as a few stragglers scrambling out onto the deck from below, swords and assorted weaponry clutched in shaking hands. Fjord didn’t see the Captain.

They were going to die here. These weren’t seasoned fighters, weren’t anything like the old crew of the Tide’s Breath. If they tried to fight, they were all going to die here. Of that, Fjord was certain. 

“ _ To the rails, you bastards,”  _ the quartermaster bellowed, no longer in competition with the cannons. “ _ Now hold! _ ” 

Sailors rushed past without paying him any mind, piling up behind whatever cover they could find at the bow and mid-deck as they prepared for the pirates to board. No one paid Fjord any mind, crouched low below cover like everyone else. Except he didn’t have a weapon at his side. Fjord sucked in another breath, his hand clenching at his side around nothing. 

_ Not yet _ , he told himself. 

They fell into the shadow of the galleon cresting high on the waves before them, his blood running cold. 

Not yet.

But for the blood rushing behind his ears, the worst part was the  _ silence _ . There was no more cannon fire, no more explosions and screams of dying men. Just the labored breathing, the gentle creak of wood, the muffled cries of wounded sailors and jeering shouts from the boarding party ahead. And – 

Something caught Fjord’s ears, the quiet creak of hinges and planks, only striking him as odd because it was  _ too  _ quiet. He glanced back toward the raised deck of the stern, movement above, someone ducking out of the captain’s quarters and pausing, turned away to close the door quietly behind them. 

When the half-elf turned, Fjord had to choke down a growl, his fists clenching so tightly his blunted claws bit sharply into his palms. All that paralyzing fear evaporated, his blood boiling. 

_ Sabian _ .

Fjord took it all back. 

If the gods saw fit for him to die here, he’d do it. But by every  _ damned  _ thing in the damned nine hells, he was taking that little fucker with him. He didn’t  _ get  _ to survive a catastrophe like this again.

He watched as Sabian turned tail from the rest of the surviving crew huddled at the rails and mid-deck below, stooping low as he ran across the open deck, and disappearing quickly as he dropped down into the ship’s hold. 

Before Fjord even properly knew what he was doing, he was scrambling to his feet to follow.

When he dropped into the hold below deck, Fjord’s boots landed in water, at least three inches sloshing over the planks, bits of wood debris and the crew’s littered personal effects swept across the hold as the ship listed dangerously. Fjord slogged through it down the middle of the ship, alternating between pushing ragged hammocks aside and grabbing hold of the ropes to keep upright as they swayed with the ship. Sabian’s back was still visible as he retreated to the back of the empty galley, the tables pushed aside and food still left abandoned from when the first panicked shout of “Sail!” brought them above deck. 

Breathing hard from the old hatred seething under his skin more than the exertion or adrenaline, Fjord shoved through the door to the galley loudly, his face fixed in a cold glare as Sabian leapt at the sound and spun quickly. 

“ _ Fuck _ ,” Sabian breathed, clutching something tightly to his chest, his other hand going to the long knife at his belt. “Fjord, what the fuck are you doing down here?” he demanded, shoving whatever he had – a crumpled scrap of parchment it looked like – into his pocket quickly.

“Followin’ you,” Fjord growled, a low rumble starting up in his chest, his mouth twisting harshly in disgust. “What’ve you got there, Sabian? The fuck are you up to this time?”

“Nothing,” he snapped, far from convincing. “Hiding. What else can I do? You think –” 

They both were nearly thrown off their feet, grabbing for the walls as the ship shuddered and jerked as it finally coasted into the broadside of the pirate vessel, a loud cry going up from above deck. Terror washed over Sabian’s face, so palpable Fjord hesitated, almost losing his resolve. 

“If you think we can fight them off,” Sabian almost sobbed, drawing his knife and clutching it tight, “you’ve finally fucking lost it.”

“You goddamn coward,” Fjord swore, glowering darkly at his crewmate, the anger swelling in his chest carrying him forward. 

“And I’m right to be! Do you know whose ship that is?” Sabian demanded, his voice rising in pitch, laced with fear. He had to shout louder over the yelling and whooping above, the shouts of pain and fear as metal crashed against metal and blood wet the deck. “That’s the  _ Red Horizon _ ,  _ Fjord _ ,” he hissed, stumbling over his feet as he backed up further, water splashing against his legs. “It flies under the banner of Captain Widogast. If you were smart, you’d hide with me, or else just throw yourself overboard already.”

“I should’ve thrown  _ you  _ overboard a long time ago,” Fjord growled, not even dropping his eyes to the knife Sabian held threateningly in front of him. He was past caring. “I should’ve killed you on the deck of the Tide’s Breath that night, you filthy fucking rat. I should’ve killed you when you dared show your face again at port, when you weaseled your way onto  _ this ship _ ,” he spat, furious, “of every one you could’ve chosen from.”

“Well you  _ didn’t _ ,” Sabian sneered, backing through the door to the small storage hold behind him, pointing his knife at Fjord’s chest. “And now you missed your chance to, because we’re  _ all  _ gonna die here. Quickly, if we’re lucky,” he laughed bitterly, “but I wouldn’t bet on it.”

Fjord’s mouth contorted in a snarl as Sabian fumbled blindly for the lock on the door, long broken, his hands shaking. The sound of the combat above was only growing louder, boots pounding against the deck thunderous as they drew nearer the stern. Another explosion somewhere in the air above rattled the ship.

“I don’t think I did,” Fjord grit out from between clenched teeth, his empty fists curled so tightly they trembled, blood welling up where his claws cut into his palms. 

“Either  _ help  _ me,” Sabian hissed, his voice shaking, angry and desperate. “Or stay the  _ fuck  _ out of my way.”

_ If there was ever a time…  _

Fjord still didn’t know how this worked. It just did. Taking a deep breath, anger molten hot and hostile boiling beneath his sternum, Fjord reached deep for that cold, ink black tether burrowed inside his chest, anchoring him to  _ something  _ he didn’t quite like to think about. Something that brought churning, frigid energy to the surface of his skin, pricking at his palms. Something that whispered  _ provoke _ , and  _ consume  _ in his dreams.

“I ain’t helping you,” Fjord swore, a promise. “And I’m sure as shit not letting you do this again.” For Vandren. For  _ himself _ .

Sabian’s expression trembled and cracked, hatred and fear together overcome by sheer panic as he lunged at Fjord, the knife in his hand plunging down toward Fjord’s heart.

Fjord flexed his right hand outward, that tether pulling tight behind his sternum, and he closed it again around the hilt of a salt encrusted falchion, materializing out of thin air with a sickly green flash. 

He sidestepped Sabian’s blade, and pivoting sharply, putting his whole weight behind the point of the falchion, thrust upward with his own.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Just about as fast as she expected, the bloodbath calmed atop the deck of the Ophelia.

“Easy,  _ easy! _ ” Beau shouted above the residual bedlam, circling her hand slowly above her head as if that would drive the point through Molly’s thick skull. He affectionately gave her the finger from behind the Ophelia’s wheel, struggling with its near shattered rudder. “Bring her around  _ without  _ shredding the sides of us. That’s it!” 

She gripped the ropes off the mizzen mast tightly as a light shudder ran through the Red Horizon when her crew pulled her abreast the Ophelia, port side to starboard. A final cheer went up from the crew scattered across both ships’ decks, bloodied and still far too riled up from a relatively easy fight. They had their quarry dead in the water before ever dropping a gang plank between them.

“Anchors!” Beau called, the order relayed down the sides of the ships. 

But then maybe an easy quarry was what they had needed; they’d been chasing this damn thing for long enough. But somehow she felt there’d be a catch.

“Alright, alright,” she tried to settle them. “Now tie us in– Yasha!” she shouted, climbing a knot higher in the rigging to flag the woman down, greatsword still hefted over her shoulder, both it and her face streaked in blood. “Help Sybil with the ropes!”

Yasha gave a nod, the small huddle of surviving sailors from the Ophelia she’d rounded up parting before her like water while she stowed her sword over her shoulder, freeing her hands to help little Bil secure the ships together. Even though they kept the tiny human girl to mostly cabin duties on account of her barely being fifteen, she was a hell of a spitfire, so Beau let her cross over to join the boarding party after they’d cleared the deck. Caleb could hardly raise an issue with Beau showing the girl the ropes –  _ heh _ , literally.

Beau jumped down from the rigging, striding across the gang plank onto the debris-strewn deck of their prize. 

“Deuces,” she called over as she walked, barely having to wave to catch the firbolg’s attention through the organized chaos. Caduceus was already supporting Marius, stooping low enough to sling his arm over his shoulder, but he gave a wave. “Let’s get a headcount, I want everyone alive and accounted for. Marius, you manage to kill anyone yet?” she hollered, grinning to herself as he looked up despairingly, motioning at the blood covering the front of his shirt.

Beau gave him a proud thumbs up, climbing up the stairs of the Ophelia’s quarterdeck and looking out over the heads of her crew members rushing back and forth both decks of the ships. They were ushering their own wounded away, corralling the handful of prisoners against the shattered main mast, and securing the hatch and stairs leading below decks as they waited for Yasha’s call to break into the Ophelia’s hold and deal with whatever resistance and cargo they found there.

“Nott?” she called out, unable to find the tiny goblin after a scan of both decks. “Anybody seen –”

“Here!” Nott shrieked from across the gang planks, scurrying up the rigging of their ship to a point eye level with Beau. Her face and arms were streaked in soot, her hair frizzled slightly like she’d managed to singe it. 

“How’re we looking?”

“Happy to report minimal damage to the hull,” Nott crowed, a broad grin taking over her face. “Gun decks are being cleared as we speak. We’ll be ready to go whenever Captain is.”

Beau had expected it given the minimal fire they’d taken, but it was a relief to hear all the same. She gave her a thumbs up. “When Yasha’s got everyone ready to sweep the hold, go with her and secure the magazine. I don’t want fuckin’ Marius touching the black powder again.”

“Aye, aye, Quartermaster,” Nott shouted, saluting sharply before scurrying back down the ropes. She took to her duties enthusiastically, maybe a bit aggressively, but if she managed to stop any of the idiots on her crew from blowing themselves sky high, Beau would take it in stride.

“Vastis,” Beau called for the scarred and sea-weathered dwarf, “you’re a handsome face,” she teased, earning her dark scowl. “Keep an eye on this lot,” she ordered, motioning to the huddled prisoners. “Given ‘em the speech. Gallan, Molly, post up at the hold. Wait for Yasha. Bil, put that fucking sword down, it ain’t yours. And  _ somebody  _ tell me where the gods damned Captain is!”

Gallen, the poor stupid sod, looked confused. “Uh, Beau, he’s –” he stumbled, pointing over her shoulder at the Ophelia’s captain’s quarters, the door hanging open on its hinges. 

“Not  _ our  _ Captain, I fucking well know where  _ he  _ is,” she sighed, wiping the sweat and blood from her brow. “ _ This  _ ship’s Captain, where they fuck are they?” she demanded, scowling over at the handful of her surviving crew. “Not one of you fuckers, is it?”

That got a panicked chorus of ‘no’s and shaking heads, their hands raised up in surrender, pleading. 

“Ah well, Vasti,” she said, turning toward the Captain’s quarters. “Ask around. Figure that out too,” she called over her shoulder as she climbed the steps to the quarterdeck, ducking through the doorway.

It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dim lighting, but it was a relief to be out from under the blazing Menagerie sun, not even a few hours past mid day. She blinked a few times, narrowing her eyes as she scanned the cabin.

The small cabin was crowded. The floor space which wasn’t occupied by the bed tucked into the corner, the desk and shelves along the walls, and the table in the center of the room was all covered by a mess of loose parchments, letters, rolled up maps, and books. They’d either tumbled from the shelves and table as cannon fire shook the ship, or they’d been torn free in Caleb’s raid of the place, almost every drawer pulled open, every shelf searched.

Beau doubted it was the latter; Captain tended to take better care of his books.

Beau cleared her throat, taking care to scuff her boots against the floorboards as she entered, announcing herself. Captain Widogast stood silhouetted by the muted daylight filtering in through the windows. His back to the door and palms planted flat on the table, he leaned over an open book set atop the disorganized sprawl of maps and ledgers, thick and leather bound, from which he never lifted his eyes as Beau approached. 

She leaned around him to get a glimpse of it. A captain’s log.

But for someone who’d actually had a rare smile on his face earlier that morning when they’d spotted the Ophelia’s sails on the horizon, the deep worry line etched in his brow and the hard set of his mouth didn’t look much like celebration.

Beau rounded the table, checking her hip against the edge opposite Caleb, her arms crossed. “Cad hasn’t finished a count of casualties,” she said, skipping a greeting and ignoring his brooding for the moment to launch into her report, “but by first estimate we fared alright,” Beau reckoned. “No deaths so far, minimal injuries. Nott says the Horizon’s in good shape. The ships are tethered, top decks are cleared, and once we’ve settled a bit up top we’ll start the sweep below. Barring any unexpected difficulties we’ll be off within the hour.”

She paused, waiting for an indication that he’d heard her.

Caleb’s eyes didn’t lift from the ship’s log. He hadn’t even turned a page. But finally, he hummed not quite approval under his breath. “The Ophelia’s captain?” he asked, sounding about as hopeful as he knew not to be.

“Hasn’t turned up,” Beau answered. “So, probably won’t.” 

Something flickered across Caleb’s expression, the muscles in his jaw leaping before it passed. 

“Is that a problem?” she asked, confused. Usually if a rival captain kicked it in the fire fight, it made the rest only that much easier. 

Slowly, Caleb traced his finger down the spine of the log, tapping the page a few times as if to draw Beau’s attention to it. 

“That the captain’s log?” Beau asked to confirm her suspicions, leaning down to take a better look. “Is it in there?”

“Yes,” Caleb confirmed, but he exhaled heavily, frustration keeping tension between his shoulder blades. “It’s true. All of it. The ship, the charted voyage from Odessloe through the western gap, all the way to the coordinates off Urukayxl. Look,” he said quietly, finally straightening up and turning the book around to push across the table toward Beau. 

She leaned in closer, skimming through the messy, tightly packed scrawl written across the page Caleb had it opened to. Her heart was thrumming in her chest as she read over the details of the voyage, confirming everything Caleb had just said. Except, “Where’s the ship’s schedule?” she asked, flipping through a few pages, but seeing no reference to dates or times. And, now that she had it in her hands, it was impossible to miss the ragged line of torn paper down the spine that Caleb had traced. 

Caleb rolled his shoulders slightly as he stepped back from the table. “A minor setback,” he intoned, turning to the captain’s desk and sifting through the pile of journals and books he’d left there.

“You really believe that?” Beau questioned, dropping the captain’s log back down to the table. “Without that schedule, we don’t have a fool’s chance in hell of catching up with her before she hits Blightshore. And then what do you tell the crew when they ask why we’ve been doing these shit runs for the past month, doing little more than breaking even?” she asked. “What do you tell the Plank King when he wants his share?”

Caleb’s hands froze in their task, his phosphorus stained fingers curling tightly around the ledger he’d last picked up. Another breath, and he stood back up to his full height, turning to face her, his expression the cold sort of neutral she used to be afraid of.

“I am not worried about the crew,” he said slowly, studying her face carefully. “Should I be?”

Beau sighed, her shoulders falling. “No. If we lose anyone else before you tell them what we’re on the tail of, then maybe,” she answered honestly, what she’d  _ been  _ saying this whole time. “But the Plank King –”

“You leave me to deal with the Plank King,” Caleb interrupted, not bothering to hide the scorn in his tone. “When’s the last time we took a tip from him, hm? He’s no right to expect anything more from us than his consignment fee.”

Beau put her hands up, unwilling to stray further from the issue at hand. “But the schedule? This whole thing’s moot without it.”

Caleb hummed in agreement, his eyes dark as flint, jaw clenched tight enough she was half surprised it didn’t spark. He reached across the table, snapping the log closed and taking it back, tucking it securely inside his coat. 

“It’s on this ship,” he said quietly. Confident. More confident than Beau thought he had a right to be. “I need Caduceus. Once he’s seen to stopping anyone from actively bleeding out, send him.”

Beau nodded, stowing her uncerstainties for after Cad tried his hand at locating their missing page. “Alright,” she agreed. “After they get done sweeping the hold.”

Caleb huffed his assent, about to say something further when a celebratory cry went up from the deck of the Ophelia, underscored by the low notes of despair of her captured crew.

“ _ Captain! _ ” a shout rang through the air, unmistakably Molly’s. “Ya’ve been  _ beseeched  _ for an audience,” he yelled, his sing-song tone mocking, his crewmates jeering along.

“Beauregard! Where’d ye go? We found ‘im,” Vastis’ booming call cut through the racket.

“Oh,” Beau sighed, rubbing her brow. She should’ve expected it, as riled up as they were still. She glanced across the table to Caleb, his brow raised curiously. “I think your crew wants a spectacle.”

“The Captain?” he asked, to which Beau nodded. “I may not require Caduceus after all.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

The heat of the mid-afternoon sun was merciless, the light reflecting up off the water almost blinding. 

Walking carefully across the splintered mid-deck, Caleb came to a stop a few paces shy of the mizzen mast, the only one left intact on the captured merchant vessel, and the badly bloodied middle aged half-elf who was sitting with his back against it, thick rope wound around both mast and man tightly.

Caleb crouched down to eye level with the fellow, sitting back on his heels and studying him wordlessly. His clothes were soaked in drying blood, his short hair matted with it, and face raked by wood shrapnel, splinters still embedded in his skin. Larger pieces of shrapnel from the hull were sticking from his side, but he looked surprisingly stable.

Beau stepped up beside him. “What are you lot standing around for?” she yelled at the curious gawkers, her fists planted on her hips. “We’ve got a hull to empty! I don’t see Yasha,” she observed. “If you left your bosun to clear the hold alone, I’ll flog you bastards myself,” she threatened, sending them scrambling back to their tasks.

“Mollymauk,” Caleb called out, his gaze still fixed intently on the captain’s face. “Stay.”

He didn’t have to look to hear the wolfish grin on Molly’s face as he answered, or the sweeping bow he gave him in response. “As you wish,” the colorful tiefling purred. 

Caleb hummed considerately, examining the man’s injuries from where he crouched. “You are in rough shape,  _ mein Freund _ . Captain…?” 

“Aiden,” he rasped, coughing dryly. “Captain Aiden. Needless to say, Captain Widogast,” he wheezed, his head lolling back against the mast, “we surrender. The Ophelia is yours.”

Caleb raised an eyebrow, allowing an amused smirk to tug at the corner of his mouth. 

Beau laughed, a low chuckle. “Is it now? I could’ve told you that,” she muttered, nudging Caleb playfully with her boot.

“The crew –” Captain Aiden stuttered, his eyes darting over his shoulder toward the remaining members, swallowing with difficulty. 

“Do you think me a monster?” Caleb purred, low and dangerous. He cocked his head curiously. 

The Ophelia’s captain looked at a loss for words, fear blowing his eyes wide. “I– ah, I–”

“Oh that’s a good idea,” Molly chuckled. “Answer that.”

Caleb sent Molly a sharp glare, silencing him. “Hm. Your wounds look tended to. Who did that, I wonder?” Caleb pondered aloud.

Aiden drew in a shuddering breath. “The big woman,” he rasped, “with the face paint. She found me on the gun deck.”

Caleb nodded. “Ah, Yasha. That was kind of her, don’t you think? She can be quite scary, but she’s not cruel.” Aiden nodded along. “I might ask her to see to your injured crew members also. Would you want that?” Caleb coaxed.

But the captain hesitated. 

“It is not a trick question, I promise you. We’ve no reason to harm then.  _ Ja? _ ” Caleb paused, his expression falling slowly, darkening. “Not unless you give me a reason to,  _ ja? _ Not unless you  _ give me a reason _ ,” he hissed, jerking his head toward Molly, all blood red eyes and blood red swords, “to send  _ that one  _ to see to your crew instead.”

Molly chuckled, waving his fingers at the captain, his pierced tail lashing back forth behind him eagerly.

Captain Aiden nodded, understanding and rising panic dawning on his face in equal part, each ragged breath coming quicker, and more shallow. “W– what do you want?” he stammered, choking on his fear.

Caleb’s smile, all teeth, pulled at his face tightly. “ _ Gut _ . Very  _ gut. _ Just some answers. You will find you cannot lie to me, I’m afraid, but please don’t hold anything back. Beauregard?”

Caleb leaned back, settling on his heels as Beau darted forward, landing two rapid strikes to the Captain’s already much abused ribs and jaw. His pained sound was choked, breath caught in the man’s throat as his eyes rolled slightly, dazed.

Caleb shifted close as she withdrew. Closer. Until the scent of blood and fear filled his nose and he could see every laceration, every tremble in this man’s face. “Someone has torn a page from the log in your cabin,” Caleb prefaced, pitching his voice low. “Was this you?”

Shuddering, Aiden shook his head, gasping. “No,” he wheezed, “no, I don’t know anything about that. Please.”

Caleb frowned, displeasure rippling over his brow. He refused to meet Beau’s gaze, even as he felt it burning into his side.

“I swear,” the Captain gasped, “I swear.”

Caleb sighed, patting the man’s cheek gently, shrapnel rough under his hand. He stood quickly as the former Captain winced and tried to shy away, a sob caught under his breath. “I know,” Caleb sighed, dusting his hands off on his coat. “ _ Danke _ , Captain.”

Caleb rolled his shoulders, his spine cracking audibly. “Beauregard,” he sighed, still not willing to acknowledge the doubt in her eyes, “search the crew, surviving and not. Molly, get me Caduceus.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Fjord breathed hard, trying to stave off the onset of panic and  _ focus _ .

Ignore it and focus.

Sabian lay face down in the water. Dead. Very dead. The red stain around him was growing, pooling dark as the bilge water washed back and forth across the planks with each sway of the ship. Pushing his corpse a little further against the wall with each sweep.

He… he had only attacked him because Sabian swung first. Sabian would have  _ killed  _ him. He was a piece of shit anyway, a coward and a traitor, and if Fjord had had the opportunity to cut him down before the explosion threw him from the Tide’s Breath, he would have done it then too. 

But once the anger had faded, the realization of what he’d done settling in, the adrenaline that flooded his veins no longer fueled the anger. Just the panic. With the anger gone, Fjord had realized, he wanted to survive this. 

He wanted that very badly.

So Fjord had dropped the falchion, letting it clatter to the floor and dissipate there in the water like it always did. It wouldn’t do him any good anyway. Above decks had gone too quiet but for the occasional rowdy shouts and celebrations of unfamiliar voices, and he was just now beginning to hear them trampling down the stairs into the galley, preparing to sweep the hold. And Sabian had been right about one thing: they couldn’t fight them and win.

That left Fjord with little creative options but to barricade himself along with Sabian’s corpse and the hardtack and vegetables there in the store room at the back of the galley.

His mind racing, it had been curiosity more than anything that made Fjord dig through Sabian’s waterlogged pockets, pulling out a crumpled scrap of wax-treated paper. Reading it the first time, still panting, his mind racing, it hardly made sense. Just a list of ports and locations at sea, most so far Northwest or East that he’d never been to them before, but some along the Menagerie Coast too. A shipping route of some sort, for a vessel whose name he didn’t recognize – the Wings of Aeons – with dates and times noted at each location.

He didn’t know what he had, but Sabian wouldn’t have stolen it from the captain’s quarters if it wasn’t worth something.Fjord just hoped it was at least worth the life of an irrelevant deck hand. 

So that, and his need for leverage, left Fjord sitting in the only dry spot he could find atop the freshwater barrels, his heart in his throat, every thump and shout above and from the galley ringing in his ears, reading and rereading the shipping schedule as many times as he could. Until he could see it clearly behind his closed eyelids. And still he continued to read it, hoping very much that his life depended on it.

When a powerful weight slammed loudly against the door he’d barricaded with a loose plank, rattling in its frame, Fjord jumped so badly he nearly dropped his flint and steel into the murky red water. Cursing himself, he fumbled with the parchment as another mighty force slammed into the door, the wood beginning to splinter. He scrapped furiously at the wax coating in the corner, enough that a spark would take hold. 

_ Praying  _ that a spark would take hold.

The door was rammed again, wood cracking, as Fjord cradled the parchment and delicate flame in his hands, blowing gently. He quickly dropped it in an empty pail with a bit of straw in the bottom as it took hold, shoving the pail behind the barrels.

Fjord just had time to watch it blacken and curl, the flame flickering and dying out as the last corner crumbled into ash, before with a final, jarring heave of the battering ram and ear-splitting crack of wood, the door flew open. 

Fjord spun around, his empty hands raised in surrender, just in time to see perhaps the largest woman he’d ever seen stomp into the room. Her black and grey-white hair was long and heavy with braids and beads, her face painted in blue, and muscles rippling with the weight of the greatsword she heaved from over her shoulder. Behind her, a tiny halfling with a crossbow – no, goblin – ran into the room, peering around the dark.

“This isn’t the magazine,” the goblin complained, scowling.

“Don’t shoot,” Fjord pleaded, putting on a wavering smile as two pairs of eyes, one golden yellow and the other mismatched, snapped in his direction. “Please don’t kill me.”

The big woman stopped inside the door, her greatsword lofted high as she scanned once around for anyone else more threatening, her eyes pausing on Sabian’s body where the shallow standing water had swept it against the corner as the ship listed to the side. But the goblin girl leapt forward, crossbow pointed directly up at Fjord’s face, a fierce snarl featuring far too many teeth on display.

“Don’t fucking move!” she screamed, her voice rasping and high pitched enough to make Fjord wince. “I’ll fuckin’ kill ya, I’ll fuckin’ do it!”

“Nott,” the big woman sighed like she was used to this, “the fight’s over. I don’t think you need to shoot him.”

“Exactly,” Fjord breathed, nodding eagerly. “I surrender. I’ve got no weapons. Please don’t kill me?”

“No weapons,” the big woman echoed, looking at him with interest. She inclined her head toward the corpse. “What happened to that one then?”

“He couldn’t stand the thought of what you might do to him,” Fjord lied through a smile. “A shame, that.”

“Hm.” The woman seemed to consider it for a moment, but if she didn’t believe him, she let it go. She lowered her sword.

The goblin, Nott, squinted at him, her tongue prodding at a chipped tooth. “So who’re you then?” she asked, fiddling threateningly with the trigger.

“Hi I’m Fjord nice to meet you,” he rattled off nervously, too quickly. “I’m a sailor, I’ve got plenty of experience, I can fight if I have to, and considering the state of mine,” he said, “I’d very much like to join your crew.”


	2. II.

When they brought him up on deck, the ocean breeze and sea water sloshing over the deck of the Ophelia had yet to wash the smell of blood away. If anything, the blazing sun making a lazy path through the sky above them only made it worse, the deck slightly gummy beneath his boots with more than pitch and resin. 

Fjord grimaced as it pulled at the soles of his boots with each step, squinting through the bright sunlight. 

While Nott scrambled off to find the powder magazine, the big woman – Yasha, as she’d introduced herself with a gentle way of speaking for such a frightening exterior – directed him out of the galley and up the stairs into the blistering sunlight without so much as another word. Not that Fjord hadn’t tried to spur a little friendly conversation; any information at all about their attackers or situation that he could glean, any at all, he could find a way to use. 

Talking his way out was, at the moment, certainly his only option.

Yasha was terrifying with that sword of hers, but at least she was reasonable, letting Fjord walk himself without being cuffed or dragged. The more he considered that though, the more Fjord was convinced it was because he was just that inconsequential of a threat to her. And the more he thought about that, the more he was inclined to agree she was right. 

The thought made the anxious knots in his gut twist tighter.

Ushered across the deck, Fjord tried not to make eye contact with the pirates rushing back and forth, carrying the cargo and valuables they’d emptied from the Ophelia’s hold. They were a blur of movement and colors in his periphery, the most diverse crew Fjord had ever laid eyes on without even counting the goblin and the tall, bovine looking fellow walking up the stairs to the quarterdeck. Fjord had never even _seen_ someone like that before.

Worse than avoiding the pirates’ attention was trying to avoid eye contact with the battered and bloodied survivors of the Ophelia’s crew, all huddled against the shattered main mast, utterly despondent. He didn’t know what he expected. For there to be more of them? For them to glare at him, label him a coward for his lack of visible injuries, accuse him of hiding from the fight, maybe. But in truth the half dozen of them that there were seemed past the point of caring. Only a few even spared him a glance.

Fjord sat quietly for a moment where he’d been told to stay, observing the chaos of the pirate crew gutting their ship. But it was organized, even if it was chaotic. He tracked who was yelling orders and who was taking them, memorizing the faces, tattoos and scars of those sufficiently low in the food chain in case he’d need to borrow them for a while. That little newfound ability of his was, by far, the most confusing. 

When Yasha vanished back below decks, taking a good portion of the boarding party with her, and when Fjord was satisfied that no one was paying them particularly much attention, he leaned over to the familiar halfling sitting beside him, his head down and knees clutched to his chest. 

“Feldo,” Fjord breathed as quiet as he could, ducking his head. “Do you know what they’re doing with us?”

Feldo squinted at him through the blood matting one eye almost closed, a long cut across one side of his forehead. “Well you look awfully clean, Fjord. Missed most the fightin’, did you?” he muttered, at least suspicious and at most resentful.

“I got trapped below the gun deck when some idiot let a cannon role over the hatch,” Fjord lied, and felt bad for it too. Feldo was always an upstanding sort. Fjord was glad to see he’d survived, assuming a worse fate didn’t await them. “I thought I was gonna drown down there.”

The halfling hummed, scrutinizing him for a long moment with his one good eye before his expression softened. “Aye, well. Might’ve been best for ya if ya had.”

Fjord paused as a colorful patchwork-clad tiefling absently swinging red-stained scimitars at their side walked by with a spring in their step, paying Fjord and his company absolutely no mind on their way to investigate some loud banter at the stern.

Fjord cleared his throat, guilt pooling uncomfortably warm in his chest. “Look that bad for us, huh?” He was hardly confident that the schedule Sabian stole was valuable enough to save his own life for however long he kept it to himself. He doubted he could also leverage it for the rest of the crew. 

“They’ve not done nothing too bad yet, save kill most us,” Feldo answered, a low humorless chuckle. “Captain’s tied to the mizzen mast,” he muttered, eyes fixed down on the stained deck, but he tilted his head in that direction. “Thought for sure the bastards would torture him right there for spectacle, make us hear him screamin’.”

“But they didn’t?” Fjord asked, trying to disguise his leaning over to get a glimpse of their barely recognizable Captain as swaying with the ship. 

“Only a little I ‘spose,” Feldo shrugged. “The woman in blue, the one keeps shouting orders, I think their quartermaster. She hit him a bit while the other one, while _Widogast_ ,” he hissed between his teeth, either fear or anger or both flashing across his eyes, “asked him somethin’, I think.”

“Widogast? Their Captain?”

Feldo shot him a cold look. “A fuckin’ terror,” he confirmed, grumbling, “idiot.”

“Sorry, sorry,” Fjord muttered. “More of a ghost story though, ain’t he?”

“I dunno, looked plenty real to me,” he grumbled darkly. “Some sort of Empire wizard, got the law after him doin’ somethin’ dark. Real dark,” he whispered, continuing. “Fled down here to terrorize us instead.” Feldo tucked his arms and legs in closer, keeping his head down. “You shoulda seen the explosion he caused. No powder, no nothing, just magic. Threw poor Visan overboard before they even boarded us.”

“Which one is he?” Fjord breathed, trying to keep his glancing inconspicuous, but no one he saw looked like a captain, much less like a wizard. 

“Well don’t fucking _look_ ,” Feldo snapped.

“I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna look,” Fjord assuaged quietly, motioning for him to calm down. He froze as the woman Feldo has identified, the quartermaster, did another scan of the ship from the helm, quickly putting his head down. “Just, tell me what he looks like.”

Feldo sniffed, swiping his wrist under his nose and smearing blood across his face in the process. “Human, real pale. Redhead,” he gave in after a moment. “Purplish sorta coat, real foreign cut to it.”

“Sure, sure,” Fjord muttered, daring to lift his eyes and scan across the deck of the Ophelia and the rails of the Red Horizon. He couldn’t help it. If he was going to bargain with anyone, it would be Widogast, or maybe the quartermaster woman. “Well, if they’ve not done anything so bad since the fighting stopped, maybe there’s some hope, eh?”

Feldo scoffed. “Use your head, mate. What option have we really got? A quick death, a slow one, slavery? Maybe they leave us to float and starve here after they’ve busted out rudder and raided our larder. Nothin’ good, Fjord. Nothin’ good.”

Fjord sighed, rubbing his eyes. Lifting his head just that much further to scan along the rails of the Ophelia’s quarterdeck, there, standing outside the captain’s cabin, he saw him. 

Fjord froze.

Captain Widogast cut a striking figure, looking out over his thoroughly won prize. He wasn’t particularly big or strong looking – probably even a little shorter than Fjord – but he still managed to look imposing. His face was refined, if a touch sunburnt, complimented by the long auburn hair he tied back that flashed copper in the sunlight. His sharp jaw was set like he was perpetually either angry or deathly serious, and his shoulders were squared, fitted coat tapering at his waist hanging open far enough for Fjord to see holstered books at his sides. 

Holstered books. It was either laughable or genius, he supposed. Maybe just a wizard thing. Fjord chewed at his lip. He’d never met a mage before, that he knew of at least. Despite all that though, to say he looked ‘intimidating’ implied, Fjord felt, that the man wasn’t nearly as attractive as he was. No, imposing was the right word.

Fjord blinked, coming back to himself. To his horror, Widogast was looking right at him from high on the quarterdeck, a sharp smirk tucked in the corner of his mouth.

“ _Oh fuck_ ,” Fjord gasped, choking on it as he ducked his head immediately. His ears went red, his face flushing warmly.

He would’ve prayed that he was mistaken, that the sun was sufficiently behind him, or that Widogast was just looking past him, or that he thought Fjord was just staring off into space. But he couldn’t shake how he’d _looked_ at him, the blue of his eyes, and far too knowing – knowing enough that Fjord suddenly worried if he had a spell to read minds. 

He was fucked. 

But then, if the worst he overheard in Fjord’s mind was that Fjord thought he was attractive, surely he wouldn’t take offense? 

“You looked, _didn’t you_ ,” Feldo accused, an underlying worried quiver to his voice as he glared at Fjord. “You just _had_ to look.”

“Shut up,” Fjord hissed, “shut up. _Excuse me_ for wanting to know who our captors are.”

“Murderers, the fuckin’ lot of ‘em,” Feldo muttered, shifting away from Fjord and turning his back to him to save himself from Fjord’s stupidity. “If they kill us because of you, I’ll haunt whatever kin you’ve got, I swear it.”

“Well let me fuckin’ know if you find ‘em,” Fjord muttered darkly, crossing his arms over his knees. 

When he dared glance up again through his eyelashes, Widogast was gone. Fjord’s heart raced over itself, skipping a beat. He had to force himself to stay still, to stay calm, to stop glancing about as if Widogast would sneak up on him. If he wanted to walk over and keelhaul Fjord, he was the captain. He could very well do it without any sneaking involved. 

That fear was put to rest when he found him again though. Widogast’s back was turned to him this time as he spoke with the pastel pink and grey tall one, towering over Widogast a good few feet. A moment later, Widogast was ushering him inside the Ophelia’s captain’s quarters, closing the door behind them. 

For the moment then, crisis averted. 

But he needed to find a way to talk to Widogast or the quartermaster, some way to negotiate some terms, and figure out the value of whatever the hell he had in his head without over estimating the hand he was dealt. But he didn’t see either of them emerge on deck.

And he probably needed to do it in the next half hour or so, if the increasingly lighter and less valuable loads the pirates were ferrying from the Ophelia to the Red Horizon meant anything. Like, _gods_ , there was one of them even carrying off Old Gunther’s little chicken pen, the hens still squawking and flapping madly inside.

Fjord sighed, keeping his eyes open. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he should be doing something, finding some means of escape… but there was very little he could do but wait.

So he waited.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Caleb shut the door behind him, motioning for Caduceus to sit down at the table. Stepping further inside the dark interior of the cluttered cabin, he raised his brow in a question at Beau.

She shook her head. “I searched the crew on deck and sent Vasti to search the bodies below. Nothing turned up.”

Caleb sighed, massaging his temples, a persistent ache building between them. 

Caduceus’ voice rolled over him low and calming, a deep vibration he could feel in his chest. “You weren’t hurt, were you Mr. Caleb?” he asked, a touching degree of concern coloring his tone.

“Ah, no, Caduceus. Thank you, I am alright,” he said, waving him off, though Cad never seemed to believe him for one reason or another when Caleb reassured him as much. “Rather, if you are able right now, I need your help locating something. Something specific.”

Caduceus looked pleasantly surprised, nodding along. “Oh, well that’s not that hard,” he said, smiling. “I think I can do that. If it’s nearby, of course.”

“It should be, _ja_ ,” Caleb agreed. “If…” He sighed, considering his words carefully; their ship’s surgeon was already far too insightful for his own good. “If I showed you a book, from which a page had been torn out, would your spell, your Wildmother, be able to find it?”

“I can’t see the harm in trying,” Caduceus offered, more optimistic than Caleb felt.

Caleb exchanged a look with Beau. She nodded. Carefully, Caleb unfastened the buckles of the book holster on his right side, the one not holding his spell book. Pulling free the captain’s log, he opened it to the torn page and placed it gently on the table before Caduceus. 

Caleb wasn’t sure why he had worried. Caduceus gingerly picked up the book, his long fingers wrapping around the sides as he lifted it from the table, examining it closely. But the way he looked at it, focusing only on the object as a whole and the rough edge of the torn page, he didn’t seem to pay any mind to the writing inside. The less he concerned himself with that, the better.

Caleb watched intently, deeply curious about the nature of the cleric’s magic, sourced so very differently than his own. But Caduceus just pulled a slender forked twig, like a dowsing rod, from a small pouch at his belt, holding it above the book as he closed his eyes and whispered a quiet prayer under his breath. 

He hadn’t realized he’d been holding his breath until Cad’s eyes snapped open a few seconds later, giving Caleb a slight nod. “It’s here,” he agreed, smiling confidently. 

Caleb could’ve kissed him. He stood back, clenching his hands tightly to keep from outwardly celebrating, though from the pleased expression on Cad’s face he doubted he succeeded in hiding his excitement. 

“Where?” Beauregard asked. “Can you take us to it?”

Caduceus rose slowly from the table, ducking slightly to avoid brushing the ceiling. “Not far. Just below us a ways.” And then he was leading them from the room.

Beau leapt after him, but Caleb stopped to grab the captain’s log, tucking it away safely in his holster before he ducked back into the sunlight, still fastening the last buckle as he followed after them, hurrying to catch up with Cad’s long strides. As the three of them cut a path across the quarterdeck and down the stairs to the mid level, he couldn’t help but steal a glance back at the sailor who’d stared so openly, one of the captives from the Ophelia’s crew. 

He was handsome – Caleb would give him that – if a little _bold_ , given his current position.

He was only slightly disappointed to find the half-orc diligently staring down at the deck, turned away from him entirely.

Even though it was Caduceus’s friendly face leading them, even on the narrow staircase his crew quickly leapt out of the way at the sight of Caleb and Beau marching swiftly on his heels. Cad didn’t take them far though, just down to the end of the galley, through a splintered door frame and into a small storage hold. 

Beau grimaced, nudging a slightly waterlogged body out of the way with her boot on the way in, the murky rust-colored water almost up to mid-calf on them. Caleb followed, his heart racing, watching as Caduceus crossed the small, already ransacked room, eyes for nothing but the empty freshwater barrels in the back. Leaning over them, his eyes searching for something, Caduceus reached down to pull up a tin pail that had been wedged behind them. 

Looking inside it though, Caduceus’ pleasantly curious expression fell, replaced by surprise. But when his eyes immediately flew to Caleb’s, his expression had fallen further into a wordless apology. 

“What?” Caleb demanded, both anxious and anxious to not let that show. He didn’t wait for an answer before cutting in front of Beau and snatching the pail from Cad’s outstretched hand. 

For just a second as he processed what he was looking at, Caleb’s stomach dropped. But then his heart rate spiked for an entirely different reason, nervous energy burned away by anger, coursing hot and destructive through his veins. Ashes. He was looking at ashes. At the curling, blackened husk of their missing page. 

Intentionally removed. Intentionally destroyed. 

Caduceus shifted uncomfortably. “I’m sorry, Caleb. I didn’t know.”

Caleb ignored him. 

“ _Why_ ,” he all but growled, shoving the pail out for Beau to see. “Why like _this_? Why not just burn the book? Or throw it overboard? It doesn’t _make sense_ ,” he hissed from between clenched teeth, throwing the pail down into the water. No mending spell was going to recover the ink on that parchment. 

Beau swore under her breath, her fingers pressed to her temples, thinking. “Okay, okay. It had to be one of their own crew. It wasn’t the Captain –”

“No it wasn’t the _fucking Captain_ ,” Caleb swore darkly, seething, the low burning lanterns strung through the galley flaring brighter as the energy thrumming under his skin roiled with his frustration. It surged, pent up, carrying him forward as he paced anxiously, water splashing up to his knee with each step. “But if he doesn’t know _something_ about this, I swear I’ll –”

“You’ll what?” Beau interrupted, firm but level, more collected than himself. “Torture him? Kill him? Kill the crew? Cathartic maybe but that doesn’t solve our problem.”

Caleb’s breath caught in his throat. He stopped mid-stride, turning sharply on his heel back to Beau. “The crew,” he echoed. “You searched the crew?”

“The ones up top, yeah,” she agreed. “You think one of them did this?”

Caleb made an effort to steady his breathing. He turned, pointing to the dead half-elf who’d made the mess of the standing water. “Someone killed him, no?”

“It was probably one of ours. Yasha –”

“No, look,” he said, pointing toward the splintered door frame. Caleb stepped through the water toward it, feeling with his boots until he kicked a cracked piece of board. He reached into the bloodied mess, pulling it free and holding it aloft just long enough to make his point before throwing it aside. “Someone barricaded themself in here. One of ours broke through it.”

“We’d have to canvas the boarding party,” Beau said, crossing her arms. “Might raise some questions, or make our thief nervous. And it _still_ doesn’t solve the problem that we’re never seeing that schedule.”

“Either that one burned the page, barricaded himself in here, and was killed by one of ours,” Caleb continued, trying to explain his thought process without the leaps and bounds, pointing at the body in the corner, “in which case you are correct, it is lost. _Or_ ,” he said, giving her a pointed look, “all of that happened, _and_ someone else from the Ophelia’s crew was in here. The two of them, together.”

“But why burn your page?” Caduceus asked, deeply confused. “I don’t really understand any of this.”

“ _That_ ,” Caleb declared, spinning toward Caduceus, “is precisely the question. Probably _not_ out of some misguided sense of loyalty,” he reasoned. 

“Protecting some random ship isn’t what I’m thinking about in the middle of a fight I’m losing,” Beau concurred, her brow furrowed in thought. “Especially if I’m the sort to come down here to hide from the fight. It’s too valuable for that. About as valuable as my life, as far as I’m concerned.”

Caleb took a deep breath, his frustration and anger dimmed in the face of a puzzle to be solved. “For leverage,” Caleb finished her thought, both of their thoughts, nodding. “You take it, you memorize it or maybe copy it on something of yours, you destroy it. And keep yourself alive.”

“That brings us back to if that person is even still alive,” Beau complained. “Fuck, it could’ve _just_ been that guy,” she said, pointing back to the body.

“No, no,” Caleb said, shaking his head. He didn’t even realize he was pacing back and forth again through the cloudy red water until Beau grabbed his elbow, stopping him. “How many?” he asked her. “How many of the living did you search above deck?”

He couldn’t help but think of the half-orc. _The half-orc_. He could still feel his eyes on him. He hadn’t been above deck before. Caleb would have noticed. He hadn’t been corralled there with the rest. Not until later.

“Just seven or so, eight?”

“Was one of them the half-orc?” he demanded, already stepping back through the door into the galley, where the standing water at least was cleaner.

Beau frowned, a worry line between her eyebrows. “No, just humans, an elf, a halfling. But Caleb, _Caleb_ –” she called after him, darting forward to grab his elbow again, stopping him. Maybe he was getting ahead of himself. “Wait. Maybe you’re right, but maybe you’re _wrong_. He could’ve been pulled up from anywhere below decks. We need to ask the crew who –”

Caduceus cleared his throat gently, purposefully, from the cracked doorway behind them. Caleb’s attention snapped to him. “Not to interrupt,” he started, tone still apologetic, “but would you like me to ask him?”

Caleb blinked, not understanding. “Who?”

Caduceus pointed to the body laying face down in the murk.

A heartbeat passed. Two. Caleb took a breath to speak, opening his mouth only to promptly close it. He looked once to Beau, just to confirm that she was as confused as himself, a little disturbed, but mostly curious. “Caduceus,” Caleb said, reining himself in. “Please correct me if I am wrong, but… are you saying, you can talk to dead people now?”

Caduceus nodded. “I can ask him, maybe, if he took this thing you want, or if not, if there was someone else down here who did.”

“Fucking what?” Beauregard finally found her words again, using them to swear abruptly. Whether it was sheer shock or resistance to the idea, Caleb wasn’t sure.

But he didn’t have any such reservations. “Do it,” he rasped, and ushered Beau back inside. 

He closed the door behind them.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

When Widogast, his quartermaster, and the fellow who’d led them both below decks resurfaced, Fjord was quick to divert his gaze. It wasn’t necessarily that he was _looking_ for him, but his eye was drawn to the sun flashing red in his hair when he came up the stairs, catching the light the way he did, and Fjord couldn’t help but look.

And he _looked_ angry, the difference clear enough from before that Fjord guessed he simply always looked that dourly serious. His jaw was tight, brow furrowed and a dark shadow cast over his face. More telling than Fjord’s ability to read his expression at first glance however was how his crew tripped and fell over themselves to hurry out of his way.

That had been enough for Fjord to shuffle back, further into the small group of his fellow sailors, keeping his head down and knees curled close to his chest. His best play, he’d decided, was to wait and see what the crew of the Red Horizon had in store for them, and if he didn’t like it, to play his cards. 

Unfortunately, it didn’t come to that. 

“Yasha!” Widogast called as he marched across the deck, right past Fjord, his trousers damp with gore to the knee now, his damp coattails snapping in the wind behind him. The first time Fjord had heard him actually call out any orders to his crew, it occurred to him.

The woman immediately dropped the crate she was carrying to the deck of the Ophelia, surprise written across her face. She hurried after her captain. 

When he reached the gang plank, Widogast stopped and turned, close enough that Fjord could see the cold, wordless intent simmering behind his blue eyes, and in the hard set of his mouth. It helped that he looked directly at Fjord. And Fjord, transfixed, couldn’t pull his eyes away. 

“Bring that one,” Widogast ordered the moment Yasha jogged to his side, his voice dropping dangerously low. The ghost of the smirk that returned to the corner of his mouth was equally self-satisfied as before, when he’d caught Fjord’s eye up on the quarterdeck, but a great deal colder now.

Fjord’s heart had skipped a beat, fluttering frantically in his chest as he panicked, not thinking, too many eyes turned on him. 

“The fuck did you do, you poor bastard,” Feldo sighed, shuffling even further away.

Fjord had just turned his attention to the nearby rail and the water below, seriously considering it for about three seconds before a hand closed over his shoulder, pulling him forcefully to his feet.

Yasha’s eyes were hard, her expression steeled. “Wait,” Fjord tried to reason, “just wait –”

“It’s not me you’ll need to convince,” Yasha said quietly, not even looking at him as she pulled him along. “You should save your explanation for the Captain.”

Keeping balance with a hand on the rigging, Widogast climbed atop his ship’s side rail, overlooking the deck of the smaller of the two ships sitting much lower in the water. “The rest of you,” he shouted to all those whose attention he had already captured, dispatching orders loud and clear, each syllable clipped. “I want us _well on our way_ to Darktow before I see any Concord sails on that horizon. Orly,” he said, dropping down from the rails and dropping in volume as he turned to address someone, “set our course.”

Just like that the top decks were once again buzzing with movement and shouts to one another as the pirates hurried toward their departure.

All Fjord could think about though – and he hated that he thought about it as Yasha dragged him bodily up and across the gang plank onto the deck of the Red Horizon, the only thing his panicked mind could focus on for more than a breath – was how lovely Widogast’s accent would sound if he weren’t most assuredly shouting orders that would lead to Fjord’s imminent death.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

When Widogast motioned to the chair across from his desk, Fjord didn’t have a choice of whether he accepted the invitation to sit. Yasha’s hand on his shoulder forced him down into it.

“I’m going out on a limb here, but if you were about to have me killed, you wouldn’t do it in your cabin. It’s way too neat in here for that sort of mess,” Fjord bet, a quiet laugh forcing its way up from his chest, dry and so far beyond merely nervous. He was babbling, hardly even aware of what he was saying and saying it too quickly at that, but it was all he had. “So I’m gonna assume you know everything, probably more about it than I do. I burned that paper, I did –” Widogast’s fixed, neutral expression twitched, pulling tight around his eyes – “but I memorized every word on it first. I’ve got it right here,” he reassured, tapping his temple, “so let’s work out a mutually beneficial arrangement, huh?” 

Silence. 

Slowly, the Captain pulled his chair back from his meticulously organized desk, its legs raking loudly across the floor planks. Watching Fjord the whole while, his own face impossible to read, Widogast sank down into his seat, crossing his legs neatly. 

His eyes flicked back up and over Fjord’s shoulder. “Thank you, Yasha. Please go help Beauregard send us off.”

Fjord didn’t turn to see, but he heard the floor creak as Yasha’s weight shifted in place, hesitating, probably not eager to leave her Captain alone with the stranger. Widogast exchanged a look with her, a slight lift to his brow. 

“Alright,” he heard her say, and that was all before he heard the door to the Red Horizon’s captain’s quarters open and close again gently. 

Widogast’s eyes returned to him. Fjord decided he had been the sole focus of that heavy gaze enough for one day; the Captain looked at him like he was deciding how to best take him apart. It sent a strange, entirely inappropriate thrill down his spine. 

“You have made this venture so much more difficult than it needed to be,” Widogast said evenly. The anger Fjord had expected, the violence, the threats… he sidestepped it all in a cool display of controlled indifference. There wasn’t a way he could’ve impressed upon Fjord that Fjord had any less agency as he sat there in his quarters than the way he did. 

Fjord forced a small, apologetic smile to his face. “The only one more upset than you about how thoroughly involved in all this I am, is me,” he assured him. “Believe me.”

“Hm.” Widogast was quiet for a moment, his eyes drifting past Fjord to some place in the distance. His fingers drummed an uneven beat against the arm of his chair. 

“I’m more than willing to write down everything that was on that paper,” Fjord tried again, willing his heart rate to calm down. “I just need some assurances.” 

Widogast’s eyes snapped back into focus. “Mutually beneficial arrangement,” he muttered quietly, enough that Fjord leaned forward to hear him better. 

Fjord’s heart stuttered. “Beg pardon?”

“That is what you said, yes…?” Widogast motioned to him expectantly. 

“Fjord.”

“Fjord,” he echoed, his accent reproducing his name softly, catching on the ‘j’ in a way that would’ve been endearing if he weren’t the most dangerous man in Fjord’s present and possibly terribly short future. “So. Let’s try that.”

Widogast opened the top drawer of his desk, pulling from it a curling piece of parchment, capped inkwell, and a heavy iron pen. He set each before Fjord, going so far as to uncap the inkwell and dip the pen, holding it out to Fjord. 

When Fjord hesitated, Widogast sighed, annoyed. “I am going to need proof that you even recall what was on that page,” he explained, looking at Fjord like he wouldn’t give him another chance. 

Fjord honestly never expected to get this far. He took the pen, looking down at the blank parchment before him, his heart hammering. “I want to join your crew.”

Widogast’s eyebrows shot up, surprise and amusement mingling with something else, but it was gone too quickly. “Write,” he ordered, motioning to the parchment. “Then we will discuss.”

Fjord bit his lip, thinking. But after a moment of Widogast’s gaze turning colder, more displeased, Fjord put pen to parchment and began to scratch out each line of that schedule as carefully as he could. 

Widogast waited in silence. When Fjord was finished, he pushed it over toward him. He picked it up a little too quickly to be quite as disinterested as he projected.

Widogast studied it closely, eyes trailing over each line Fjord dutifully copied down, a frown slowly turning the corners of his mouth. “This schedule would have the Winds of Aeons’ voyage end at sea somewhere past Nicodranas,” he identified accurately after a moment of careful study, his eyes flicking back up to Fjord’s, deeply unamused. 

“What’s there is proof I’m not lying. And it’s enough to guide you for at least two or three weeks, isn’t it?”

Widogast put the parchment back down on the desk before Fjord. “Finish it,” he ordered tersely, his words dropping into a slight growl.

“If I did that,” Fjord said, swallowing, “you wouldn’t need me alive anymore. So you can see the position I’m in,” he explained, breathless.

Frustration flickered across Widogast’s face as he leaned in close, his hands braced on the sturdy rosewood. “I need you alive, yes. But there’s a great deal I can do to a man short of killing him,” he growled. “I assure you, Fjord,” he clipped, and _there_ was the anger and the threats that Fjord had been expecting, “I am plenty capable of forcing your hand.”

“I believe you,” Fjord assured him, nodding, his eyes wide and yet unable to pull them away. He meant it. “I’m sure you could do plenty of terrible things to me I don’t want to even think about. But really,” Fjord laughed, dry and mostly humorless. “I’ve got a shit pain tolerance, and I’ll write anything to make it stop.”

Widogast frowned, his lips pressed together tightly and brow furrowed, but Fjord saw the slight pull at the corner of his mouth. An acknowledgement that Fjord was right. 

“I’ve got nothing against you, personally,” Fjord explained, sounding a great deal steadier than he felt. “But like I said, I need assurances.”

“How does joining my crew provide you with these ‘assurances’?” Widogast asked, head tilted to the side curiously, his tongue darting out to wet his cracked lower lip.

Fjord drew in a shallow breath, steadying himself. “Like I said, mutual. That’s at least two more weeks that I’m alive, isn’t it? At least I know you won’t kill me the moment I give you what you want.” 

Widogast smirked at that, not looking upset at the accusation in the least. “You pretend to know what it is I want, then?” he asked, and the way his eyes flicked over Fjord for the barest moment, the way he pulled his lip between his teeth, grinning like that… he was toying with him. He had to be. 

Fjord cleared his throat, trying not to shift awkwardly in his seat. It was just the heat getting to him. 

“No,” he admitted, his mouth dry. “No, except for this ship you’re after. But I can pull my weight, I’ve got plenty of experience. And when the time comes you need the rest of that schedule, I’ll be right by your side. I help you track down this prize you’re chasing, and I get my share of it as a part of the crew.”

Widogast scoffed, either impressed or just surprised. “Very bold of you,” he chastised lightly. “But in your effort to survive, _mein Freund_ ,” he summarized aptly, “you are cutting yourself a very raw deal. What you are asking for is dangerous. You know this, _ja?_ ”

“Oh sure,” Fjord agreed, shrugging. “You telling me I’m not in danger right now? Or that I wasn’t an hour ago? But it’s not like I was thrilled with my last employment, and at least I know you’ll have a vested interest in my well-being,” he pointed out, feeling just daring enough to wink across the desk at the pirate, brazen-faced. He was already walking a razor’s edge, had already gotten this far – his thought process wasn’t so much, ‘let’s be more careful,’ as it was, ‘might as well’.

Widogast laughed, a short, crisp sound, but genuine. “Survival,” he corrected, “not _well-being_.”

Fjord sighed, resigned to that. “That’s a risk, sure. It’s why I’ve got one more immediate condition, on top that.”

“Do you?” Widogast’s face lit up in amusement, like Fjord was a child just playing at negotiating for his own life. The vague threats were terrifying, sure, but even though he was scared there was also an excitement thrumming in his veins, but _that_ reaction from Widogast rubbed Fjord the wrong way, anger sparking behind his sternum.

“Yeah, I do,” he repeated, his tone sharp, scowling darkly across the desk at the Captain. 

Widogast’s eyes never left Fjord’s face, his outward amusement fading at Fjord’s reaction, studying him carefully like there was something more to read there. _In general_ he’d been looking at Fjord like there was some sort of puzzle to solve here, like Fjord wasn’t wearing everything on his sleeve. More confusingly, Widogast just hummed considerately, leaning back in his chair. Still watching Fjord curiously, he gestured for him to continue. “Let’s hear it then.”

“The crew. The remaining crew of the Ophelia,” he said. He was being foolish with the little grace he was given, he knew, but he had to try. He wasn’t like Sabian. He wasn’t like that. “You’ll let them go. Alive and unharmed, and some place near port.”

Widogast cocked his head ever so slightly, narrowing his eyes at Fjord. “What exactly did you think we were going to do with them?” he asked, as if he had a right to be hurt or surprised by Fjord’s assumptions. 

“I had some time to think of plenty things.”

Widogast hummed, thinking. “Have you considered,” he said slowly, his voice slipping low. Predatory, some hindbrain instinct warned him, the way his eyes tracked Fjord from across the desk. Too bright. Too eager. “Perhaps I kill your crew, one by one, until you write out everything you remember from that page you burned?” he asked, like he’d be perfectly content doing so. Whether he meant it though, or was testing him somehow… 

Fjord swallowed, finding some resolve buried in his chest he hadn’t known he possessed, and in that moment decided to call Widogast’s bluff. “Say you do,” Fjord shrugged, crossing his arms, putting on a confident face. “The way I see it, I do the same thing I’d do if you try to torture it out of me.” He leaned forward in his chair, meeting Widogast’s appraising look directly. “Seems to me, if you want accurate information, that ain’t the way to get it.”

“Hm. Even if you know I would kill you after?”

“Especially because I know you would kill me after.”

Widogast was quiet a moment. Short of responding, he stood, pushing his chair back. Fjord watched him, confused as he shrugged out of his coat first, then unbuckled the leather holsters that hugged his shoulders and ribs, shrugging out of that too, draping it books and all over his chair.

“Say you and I strike a deal right here,” Widogast proposed, entertaining the idea as he slowly walked around the desk to Fjord’s side, checking his hip against the edge, arms crossed, “Two or so weeks go by hunting the Winds, I ask you to give me the rest of the schedule, you do it as you say you will.” He looked down at him curiously. “Aren’t you concerned I will just kill you then?”

Fjord got to his feet slowly, holding Widogast’s gaze. A small, fiercely competitive part of his brain that seemed to lack any notable survival instinct had him grinning a bit, smug at the few inches of height he had on the sea captain. “The thought occurred to me, yeah.”

“And?”

“Well, that’s a few weeks from now, isn’t it?” Fjord said, grinning more broadly. “We might be friends by then.”

Widogast laughed, looking at him like he’d grown a second head. “That’s good enough for you?”

“Guess it’ll have to be.”

Widogast looked at him a moment more before he pushed off the desk, standing straight. “Very well then.” Reaching a hand to the back of his belt, he pulled a small dagger free of its sheath.

“Hold on just a second there –” Fjord started to protest, stumbling backward a step, but Widogast paid him no mind. In one practiced motion, he placed the blade in his right palm and pulled, crimson trickling from between his fingers. 

Wordlessly, he passed the dagger, pommel first, to Fjord. 

Hesitantly, he took it, thinking for one impossible second about his odds if he tried to turn the blade on Widogast before dismissing the idea. He tried his damnedest not to wince in pain as he dragged it across his own palm, as shallow and steady as he could.

When Widogast extended his bleeding hand to shake on it, cut palm to cut palm, Fjord took it firmly. The Captain’s hand closed around his with an iron grip he didn’t expect though, suddenly yanking Fjord forward. Unprepared, cursing himself internally for fumbling the dagger to the floor, Fjord would’ve stumbled right into him if Widogast’s left hand hadn’t come up to grip the side of his neck, holding Fjord’s face mere inches from his own. 

“You and I have a pact now,” Widogast said, low like a warning, his fingers tightening on the back of Fjord’s neck, fingernails digging crescents into his sun weathered skin. His eyes bore right through Fjord’s, the piercing intensity behind them fixing Fjord in place more than his grip. “I trust you to act on your part of it when the time comes.”

Then Widogast released him, turning away entirely as he almost absently opened a drawer in his desk, pulling out a clean rag and carefully wrapping his hand, still bleeding.

Fjord’s gut twisted. It was probably nothing, probably a placebo or even his own strange bit of magic worming its way up to his skin – he would have noticed Widogast actually casting any sort of spell – but his palm buzzed with something other than pain. It pulsed warm, the feeling extending all the way up to his elbow, tingling as it faded. Not for the first time since burning that stupid scrap of parchment that landed him here, Fjord wondered what the hell he’d really gotten himself into. 

Widogast grinned at him in a way that set warning bells off in Fjord’s head. But he was never much good at heeding those. 

“Welcome to the Red Horizon.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

When Caleb stepped out onto the quarterdeck, Beauregard was waiting outside, leaning against the cabin wall by the door. 

“Fjord,” he said pointedly, stepping aside for the sailor to exit behind him, blinking at the harsh light. Caleb gestured to Beau. “This is your quartermaster, Beauregard. If she doesn’t kick your ass at least once, I’ll be disappointed.” 

Beau’s eyes flicked from Fjord to Caleb, arching a pierced eyebrow at him in surprise. She didn’t question him though, not outwardly. “So noted,” she said. 

Fjord nodded his greeting, “Quartermaster.”

“Put the Ophelia’s crew in the brig,” Caleb ordered. “We’ll drop them outside Palma Flora.”

Beau’s brow went up further. “We could just let ‘em float for a few days. This is a popular enough shipping route. A Concord or merchant vessel would probably pick them up soon.”

“Yes, we could,” Caleb agreed, squinting across the deck, looking for a suitable candidate among his crew. “But we are not going to. Nott!” he called out once he saw the soot-stained goblin riding a crate Gallan and Yasha were carrying across the deck together. He flagged her down, waving her over. 

His uninjured hand on Fjord’s shoulder, Caleb pushed him forward as Nott climbed up to the quarterdeck. “Fjord, Nott,” he introduced them. “Nott, show Fjord below deck. Get him a bunk and show him the ropes on our way to Darktow.” 

Nott scowled at Fjord, glaring him up and down. Picking at her teeth, she glanced back to Caleb. “I didn’t know we had a spot to fill,” she observed, leaving it to Caleb to treat it as a question or not.

“Marius has been complaining about the watch. He’d appreciate another set of eyes and hands,” Caleb offered a brief explanation, not incorrect either. 

“Fair enough,” Nott shrugged. “Am I allowed to haze this one?” she asked, making Beau snort. “He looks like he could use it.”

Fjord sighed. 

Caleb shooed her away, rolling his eyes. “Just don’t kill him.” 

“Come on then you great big bastard!” Nott yelled, making Fjord jump. She squinted up at him, scraggly teeth bared intimidatingly. “You’ve got a shit ton to learn and I’m not a very good teacher!” she yelled over her shoulder. 

Already running off, Nott forcing Fjord to jump after her with hardly a final glance Caleb’s way, a mumbled, “Captain,” and then he was gone.

Beau sidled a bit closer to him as they both watched them go. 

“He’s joining the crew?” she questioned, dubious.

Caleb hummed an affirmative note, scanning the deck and the sea beyond. He passed the folded parchment Fjord had scratched out half of the schedule on to Beau, waiting for her to skim it before continuing. “He won’t finish that until it’s absolutely necessary, as it will make himself _unnecessary_ upon doing so,” Caleb explained, unconcerned. 

Beau frowned. “So is he our crew mate, or our prisoner?” She refolded the parchment, passing it back to Caleb.

Caleb considered the question a moment, weighing both options. “Yes,” he said finally, tucking the partial schedule into his breast pocket.

She huffed, crossing her scarred arms across her chest. “You don’t want to just work it out of him now?” Beau pressed, still unconvinced. “You know I can get the truth out of him,” she observed, cracking her knuckles. 

Caleb thought back to the Ophelia’s Captain, his eyes rolling, dazed. “I am aware.”

Beau shifted around to face him, putting her back to the crew for more privacy as they rushed to their stations, preparing to cut themselves free when she or Caleb gave the order. “Why not then?”

Caleb took a deep, cleansing breath, enjoying the cool breeze that picked up off the water. “We spoke to a dead man today, Beauregard,” he recalled, a little in awe of that fact himself. “A dead man.” 

“We did that, yeah,” she agreed, inclining her head. “And he told us his own crew mate killed him before we even could. Now you want to trust a man like that on our crew?”

Caleb shook his head. “Trust, no.” He met Beau’s gaze. “You heard the dead man the same as I. Both of those sailors were on the Tide’s Breath when she went down, Beauregard,” he said with more conviction, lowering his voice. “Vandren’s vessel. I hadn’t thought there were any survivors, much less two.”

“One now,” Beau countered.

“At least one,” he agreed. “All the more reason to keep that one around. He could know something. He could be useful.” 

“Maybe,” she said, “or maybe he doesn’t know anything. But both Caduceus and Yasha know more than they did yesterday,” Beau pointed out, her tone critical. “And by nightfall, you can bet the rest of the crew will be gossiping about all the questions today raised, if they’re not already.” 

Caleb worried at the inside of his cheek, humming his acknowledgment. “I understand your concerns.”

“Do you?” she asked, her brow going up. “Are you sure you want to pick a fight with the Empire, the Dynasty, _and_ Avantika on top of all that?”

A dark scowl overtook Caleb’s expression. “I have not picked a fight with the Empire,” he corrected sharply, “they –”

“Picked a fight with you,” Beau finished for him, sighing. “Fine, fine. But –”

“And I am not picking any fights with Avantika,” he interrupted, giving her a sharp look.

Beau just threw her hands up, resigned. “Not yet, maybe,” she said, frustration creeping into her tone. 

Caleb was going to respond, an argument brewing, but Beau was already walking away. 


	3. III.

That night, once their ill-begotten cargo had been squared away and the sun had set without sight of another sail for leagues, there was celebration aboard the Red Horizon.

Fjord wasn’t sure if it was reserved for a special occasion – the capturing of a fair prize, and with no fatalities at that – or if it was simply how the crew chose to wind down their nights. He was hoping it was the former. He had seen and survived plenty a crew of drunken sailors and their revelry, but Fjord wasn’t sure that he could weather this for long.

It seemed that everyone who wasn’t currently manning the night’s skeleton crew had packed into the galley, many faces and names Fjord had begun to pair together and many others he still hadn’t. The long tables had been shoved to the edges of the room to make space for the brawling ring. It was a fists and bare skin sort of arrangement, knuckle wraps optional, and with no rules beyond not going too far, as far as Fjord had gleaned. 

And what ‘going too far’ meant seemed to be negotiable. 

Just as he wiped the sweat from his brow, Beau feigned left faster than he thought possible. Fast enough to have actually hit him if that had been her intention. But she pulled the punch as he tried to jerk back before she suddenly darted in close, slamming her right fist into his unprotected ribs. Followed closely by a left jab directly to his diaphragm.

A roar went up from the crowd of onlookers packed densely around their rough circle, voices and pints raised in support of their quartermaster. It all blended together in Fjord’s ears as he reeled back from the blows, his lungs burning, his everything aching, gasping for the air that had just vacated his chest.

Doubled over in pain and trying desperately to catch his breath, he held up a hand, pleading for Beau to take mercy as he dropped to his knees when white spots appeared behind his eyelids. 

She did of course, because Fjord had essentially been press-ganged into a clearly unfair fight, a fight in which he was clearly being toyed with, something he tried to accept with grace. The fight seemed more about a proper hazing than killing him. She bounced back nimbly on the balls of her feet, throwing her bloodied knuckles up with a whoop he couldn’t hear over the roar of their audience. She grinned through the split lip Fjord had managed to give her, among not much else. 

It was hard to make out much of what anyone was yelling, as loud and bloodthirsty and thoroughly inebriated as the sailors packed onto the deck were. Below deck was near sweltering between the warm Menagerie night, the oil lanterns burning bright and the sheer number of bodies crammed around the circle. None of it helped the headache forming between Fjord’s ears. 

And yet, whether it was the drink or the adrenaline or the knock to the head Beauregard had given him, Fjord could admit, he was beginning to understand the appeal.

It was reckless, and stupid, and no one walked away with anything except bruises and bloody knuckles and either a wounded or inflated ego lasting just until the next fight; they weren’t even allowed to make bets on the ship, one of the first rules Nott had drilled into his skull – not for coin or prize shares and certainly not chores or shifts. But the air was electrified. If Fjord knew these people a little better, if he hadn’t known the men and women they’d killed just that afternoon, even though he didn’t know them that well and cared for most of them even less, this shit would’ve been more fun than anything he’d gotten into on a merchant sailing vessel or during his time dockside.

He just wished that he was one of the drunk bastards jammed into the benches or sitting on the tables around the ring, instead of being the poor bastard getting his ass kicked in the middle for their entertainment. 

“Come on, Fjord,” Beau hollered during a lull in the jeering and whistling, grinning down at him. Quick as anyone could blink she danced to the outside of the circle, snatching a mug of ale from the hand of someone who held it out too far from his side and throwing it back, draining it, much to the delight of her crew. Throwing it aside to clatter across the floorboards, she grinned down at him wolfishly. “Get up.”

“Get up you lazy bastard!” someone, Nott he thought by the way her voice somehow both grated and shrieked at the same time, shouted from atop the tables. “You can do better than that!” came her raspy cry, even though he couldn’t see her, bringing others to his cause.

Gallan, the ship’s carpenter, one of the faces she’d introduced him to, lurched to his feet, joining in with, “Aye, get up! Give her what for!” 

It was a call echoed immediately by Molly, the eccentric tiefling Nott had warned him would be a relentless flirt in less kind words. Perched atop his shoulders and joining in just as quickly was the tiny gnome he’d seen climb the masts and rigging like she was born up there. Gilda he thought her name was. And from there it spread, the calls either terribly supportive or terribly cruel, but given the very predictable outcome of this bout Fjord didn’t really see a difference.

Breathing hard, Fjord looked up through his sweat-damp hair, tracking Beau’s movement as she danced around the opposite edge of the circle. With Nott leading them the sailors took up a chant – _“Get up! Get up!”_ – until the whole crew had joined in, slamming their drinks and fists down on the tables in time until the galley was practically shaking. Grimacing, Fjord pushed his hair back from his eyes, scrubbing the grime and sweat from his face. 

He didn’t think he’d be impressing anyone with his sparring abilities, not against Beau, who’d clearly had some formal training – something which everyone had found hilarious to not advise him of beforehand. Not that he had a choice before he was pushed into the ring. That left him with only the opportunity to impress with his ability to take a hit. Because that, he could do. And he _was_ getting something out of this beating, even if it was only earning a bit of his new crew’s respect. 

It would go a long way toward his long term survival. 

Spitting the blood from his mouth, Fjord ignored the burning protest from his ribs and pushed himself up to his feet, earning a riotous uproar of approval from the audience, only then breaking off their chanting. As he rose, he stumbled back a step into the edge of the crowd behind him only for hands at his naked back and under his arms to lift him up, to push him back into the middle of the ring.

He threw himself forward with that momentum, ducking low and rushing Beau before she could dart forward and around and land him in his ass again. Whether she’d been tiring or just drinking, he managed to catch her in her middle with his shoulder, hooking his arm around her waist. His entire weight behind him as he threw himself at her, Beauregard’s legs went out from under her and Fjord brought them both down to the floor hard.

The admittedly surprised shouts that went up in his name didn’t last long. Beau rolled out from under his arm immediately, grabbing his wrist and spinning there on the ground to straddle his back, his arm twisted ruthlessly behind him. 

“ _Fuck_ ,” he swore in as much frustration as pain, not that he could even hear himself over the uproar. He tried to buck her, even got a knee under himself, his face digging into the worn floorboards. But she only twisted his arm higher, threatening to dislocate his shoulder entirely, her heels digging painfully into his already bruised ribs.

Beau leaned her face down over his shoulder, panting but grinning victoriously. “You gonna tap out?” she growled around her bloody smirk, twisting his arm behind his back higher to enunciate her point. 

Fjord hissed in pain, grinding his teeth. “Not yet,” he grit through his clenched jaw, determination or else just stubbornness a dreadful influence. Quickly, at the same time he pushed against the floor with all his flagging strength in an attempt to roll and dislodge her, with his free hand he reached up over his shoulder, got a fistfull of Beau’s hair at the crown of her head, and yanked _hard_ , tearing her off him with a sharp, pained shout.

A low note of surprise and delight rippled through the gawkers, watching eagerly as Fjord scrambled away across the floor as quickly as he was able. Not nearly quickly enough. 

Beau had rolled fluidly over her shoulder the moment he tore her from his back and bounced immediately to her feet, both hands gripping her scalp as she cursed foully at him, her face contorted in pain and anger. But only for a moment. The second she saw Fjord getting his footing, with a roar of frustration she threw herself at him with a vengeance.

She moved faster than should have been humanly possible. Fjord barely blocked her first strike toward his face with his forearm without any time to celebrate the feat before her knee landed squarely in his abdomen. He swung at her wildly, surprised he even made glancing contact as he gasped and tried not to double over, their crowd’s roar in his ears. He stumbled back as her next strike landed just below his sternum, her knuckles digging into his solar plexus and making his vision tunnel dark around the edges and his every nerve flash cold and numb. 

It left him stunned as her fist flew toward his face, slamming into his jaw with a resounding crack. Starbursts behind his eyes, it sent him careening sideways. 

When he blinked his eyes open, Fjord was lying prone on his side on the damp floor, his head ringing, one side of his face pulsing hot. The ringing in his ears died gradually but they still felt stuffed with cotton, the roar of the crew shouting and stamping, fists and mugs pounding against the tabletops carrying high above his head, muffled like he was underwater. 

Beau was still standing in the ring, breathing hard and swiping the sweat from her face with the back of her hand. He didn’t think he’d been out for more than the time it took him to drop. She was still shuffling backward away from him. 

Something feral in his blood reared its ugly, ancestral head before he could succumb to the fuzzy black edges of his vision completely; he _wasn’t_ done yet. The metallic taste and scent of blood overwhelming his senses, his muscles burning, lungs overworked, and blood rushing loudly behind his ears, with a growl and one last burst of adrenaline through his veins Fjord dug his fists into the stained floorboards, laboriously pushing himself up to his hands and knees, and finally to his feet.

Fjord thought their audience had been riled up before; they hadn’t, not comparatively. Surprise flickered across Beau’s wide-eyed expression as he staggered upright, then something close to approval – or else just pleasure at getting to lay into him again – before her face hardened. Whatever it was, it was short lived. Her eyes narrowed, a confident smirk curling at the corner of her mouth deadly sharp, reminding him of someone.

She waited for Fjord to come to her. His fists raised defensively in front of him with each unsteady step, he was helpless as seemingly effortlessly she shifted to the side, leaping up high and rotating her hips sharply in mid-air.

Fjord saw her foot kick toward his head, sweeping wide. 

He didn’t remember feeling the impact.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

He came back to consciousness coughing and spluttering, for a panicked moment sure he was drowning again as a bucket of cool sea water was dumped over his head. He surged forward gasping, swearing when he found the breath to. He tried to sit upright but only made it up to his elbows as his every fiber protested the move, his hands clawing at the worn floorboards beneath him. 

Still on the ship, then. The pirate ship. Not drowning.

He groaned, the salt stinging each cut and open sore. Swiping the water from his eyes, Fjord blinked through the dim light of the berthing deck. The low lantern light flickered and cast moving shadows across the gently swaying rows of hammocks. Slowly, the haze clinging to his eyes faded, even as his head still felt too light. And as it did, the leering face of his new goblin crewmate came into focus over him, grinning a little too broadly for his liking.

Nott stood over him, swaying gently with the deck. Flask in one hand and empty bucket in the other. “Welcome back, sailor,” she greeted, her voice a thick rasp, and sounding too far away. 

Fjord forced a shallow breath into his lungs, wheezing slightly as he exhaled, flopping back against the floor. “Fuck you, Nott,” he slurred around the blood in his mouth, not sure when he’d bitten the inside of his cheek, but rather aware of it now. There was a tight swelling of one side of his jaw. The berth was spinning. He felt like he might be sick.

“I told you that’s a shit way to wake somebody up,” sighed the gangly half-elf with a blonde mop of hair on top his head, standing beside Nott. No, he was further than that. He was sitting in one of the hammocks over Nott’s shoulder, a mess of bandages over his shoulder and upper arm.

“Oh shut it, Marius, he’s _fine_ ,” she assured confidently, rolling her eyes. Nott turned over her shoulder, peering through the dark. “I brought him back, Caduceus,” she called, pleased with herself. 

“Sure you did,” came a slow, deep voice in response, soothing as it rolled over him, footsteps approaching. Its owner didn’t sound impressed. “I don’t suppose you had anything to do with how he first got in this state?”

“No!” Nott denied, offended, her voice rising in pitch and piercing through Fjord’s skull painfully. “That was _allll_ Beau,” she assured, a little too gleefully, but her face quickly fell into a frown, chastised silently by whoever she was talking to. This Caduceus person. Nott dropped the bucket, crossing her arms. “We’ll _he’s_ the one who kept getting back up!”

One of his eyes a bit difficult to open, gritting his teeth against Nott’s raised voice, Fjord squinted through the dark and the fog in his head to see the tall pastel one who he’d first seen lead Widogast below decks leaning forward over him. 

“Hi,” he smiled down at Fjord, his expression unnervingly kindly. “Caduceus Clay. I’m the ship’s surgeon. I don’t think we’ve met.”

Fjord tried to respond, but only got as far as a dry croak escaping his throat. He dropped his head back down to the floor with a dull _thunk_. A decision he regretted as nausea threatened to overwhelm him at the impact. 

“Oh, right,” Caduceus, sighed. “I can help with that.”

It might’ve just been a trick of the light, and he _was_ going a bit cross-eyed as he tried to watch, but Fjord would’ve sworn Caduceus’ hand was glowing faintly when he tapped Fjord’s forehead, muttering something gentle under his breath.

The effect was immediate. It was like stepping out of the glaring sun into the shade, relief dragging its cool fingers down his spine and washing away the fog from his head, taking most of the dull ache with it. The swelling too abated, the side of his face no longer throbbing or feeling quite so tight, and he was able to fully open both eyes again. 

Fjord cleared his throat, confused for a moment. He gingerly touched the side of his face, prodded at the cuts that had just been opened over his cheekbone, now scabbed over as if he’d received them days ago. 

He’d never experienced any sort of healing magic. Had to imagine those sorts of services were far more expensive than anything he could ever afford in Port Damali. But that had to be what Caduceus had done. First the ship’s Captain, then the ship’s surgeon. Fjord was beginning to think perhaps it was more than a little serendipitous he ended up here, if he really was to learn anything more about what the fuck was happening to him.

Thankful but cautious, he pushed himself up to a sitting position, eyeing Caduceus carefully as he reached out to steady Fjord with a hand on his shoulder. 

Fjord cleared his throat, swallowing. “Thanks,” he rasped, wincing and wrapping his arm around his middle protectively as he tried to pull in too deep a breath. “Um, Fjord,” he returned the introduction.

“Pleasure to meet you, Fjord,” Caduceus said, rising to his feet, picking up a lantern Fjord hadn’t noticed he’d come in with. “Easy now, I’m afraid after the day we’ve had and with the night still being early,” he explained, glancing down the aisle between the hammocks in the direction of the galley, the loud ruckus inside still audible, “I can’t help much more than that.”

The half-elf Nott had derisively called Marius snorted from his hammock, crossing his arms over his chest. “Heard that before,” he complained, turning his nose up at them. “I still think, if you idiots _choose_ to kick the shit out of each other in there, you should just have to heal the normal way.”

“Shove it, _Marius_ ,” Nott sighed, stumbling a little as the ship swayed. She took another long swig from her flask. Fjord wondered how he hadn’t noticed how drunk she clearly was until then. “You’re _fiiiiiine_ ,” the little goblin slurred, waving him off with an exaggerated gesture. 

“You know, he really said it right, Nott,” Marius said, frowning at her. Fjord’s drink and beating-addled brain caught up fast enough to recognize that he sounded hurt more than anything. “Fuck you.” And that confirmed it.

Between the capturing of the ship that afternoon, the bandages, and that Marius seemed to be sleeping before Fjord had been dragged in here rather than joining in the celebrations, Fjord was able to put two and two together. 

“Sorry,” he rasped, trying for a small smile but mostly wincing as his ribs twinged uncomfortably. “Believe me, I wouldn’t have gotten nearly as involved as I did if I’d had my way. Certainly not with Beauregard,” he chuckled, self-deprecating.

Marius huffed, sympathetic. “Sucks being the new guy, doesn’t it.” It wasn’t quite a question.

“Bet you’re glad now, Marius,” Nott taunted, “now there’s someone greener than you on board.” She paused, blinking, before a smug grin spread across her face, too toothy for comfort. “Heh, ‘greener’,” she mumbled to herself, amused.

He didn’t think Nott of all people meant it as a jab, just it stung something that was used to recoiling under Fjord’s skin regardless.

“I will throw you overboard, Nott,” Marius threatened, more wounded than angry. And annoyingly nasally. “I don’t care how much the Captain likes you, I _will_ do it. Fuck that stupid ring of yours and fuck Caleb, you can run after us to catch up. See if I care.”

There was… a lot about that threat that Fjord didn’t understand. 

“I’d like to see you try,” Nott growled, narrowing her eyes, her thin lips pulled back in a snarl that contained too many teeth. “You should watch your fuckin’ mouth. Say ‘fuck Caleb’ one more time and I’ll knock your lights out you fucking pansy-ass coward.”

“Don’t call me a –”

Caduceus cleared his throat. “Well, I’m going to head back now.” He looked to Nott, silent disapproval evident in the slight furrow of his brow and the tightening around his mouth. “If anyone else needs some help, you know where to find me.”

Grumbling, Marius pulled his thin blanket up to his chin and rolled over moodily, putting his back to Nott and the rest of them.

Fjord grabbed the hammock behind him to keep his balance as he stood, testing his legs under him cautiously and finding them surprisingly stable. He winced at where his muscles were still stiff and aching, bruises blooming purple across his bare chest. 

Before Caduceus could get more than a few steps away, lantern lofted in front of him at eye level, Fjord called after him. “Uh, Caduceus,” he began, his mouth still dry, limbs still heavy, but curiosity drove him forward. “Thank you,” he offered as Caduceus glanced back. “For whatever you did to me. Thanks.”

“Oh,” Caduceus laughed gently, shrugging slightly. “You’re very welcome, but it was no trouble, really. Just a little bit of healing. That’s what I’m here for,” he said dismissively, as if what he’d done, that sort of magic, that sort of control over it, wasn’t absolutely incredible.

“So you’re – you’re some type of wizard then?” he asked. _Like Widogast_ , he stopped himself from adding. 

“Oh no, not like that,” Caduceus shook his head, smiling like that was amusing. His eyes trailed off Fjord as he thought on it for a moment. “I’m just a – I’m…” He trailed off, looking perplexed, but pleasantly taken by the question regardless. 

“A _cleric_ , Cady,” Nott interrupted, climbing up into a hammock she’d seemingly picked from nearby at random. She took another sip from her flask as she settled lower into the fabric. “You’re a cleric,” she grumbled, flask cradled to her chest.

Caduceus either didn’t hear her, or he was simply practiced in handling her. “I’m a healer,” he settled on finally, nodding, pleased. “Yeah, I like how that sounds. I follow the Wildmother, and she gives me the ability to help people, or to put them to rest.”

He said it with a smile, but something about that last line struck Fjord as terribly creepy. 

“I’d be happy to talk with you about her some time,” the cleric offered, his expression brightening, almost hopeful.

Fjord didn’t know what to say to that, because partly he wanted to know more – about magic, about what the hell was going on with himself, not that he thought Caduceus had any answers to that particular question – but Caduceus also seemed the type to take a politely vague answer that Fjord could decide whether to pursue later or not as a sure acceptance. 

He was saved from having to muster a response by Marius’ loud sigh, deeply annoyed. “Can you please go talk about gods and shit somewhere else?” he complained, not even turning back to face them, just curling in on himself tighter. “I am _trying_ to put this clusterfuck of a day behind me.”

“Ah,” Caduceus rumbled, nodding, contrite. “Maybe another time then,” and with a parting wave, lumbered down the aisle between the hammocks, and turned toward the stairs at the end of the berthing deck, disappearing deeper into the hull in the direction of the sick bay. 

Left standing there in silence for a moment, the muffled sounds of jeering and shouts still reverberating through the hull and warm light spilling out from under the galley door, Fjord turned to Nott only to find her passed out soundly in her commandeered hammock. 

So much for helping him settle into the Red Horizon.

Sighing, Fjord carefully maneuvered his way through the dark before finding the hammock he’d claimed earlier that day. Digging through the small bag of his belongings that had been salvaged from the Ophelia for a shirt, considering the one he’d been divested of in the galley a lost cause, Fjord glanced back toward Marius’ bunk. He considered leaving him to the peace and quiet he so clearly wanted for a moment before the part of his brain that itched to poke where he probably shouldn’t won out against his better judgement.

“Ah, Marius, was it?” he asked, his voice carrying through the dark.

He heard a loud frustrated sigh, followed by a brief moment of silence. “Yes,” Marius finally muttered. Fjord could barely see him shuffling, rolling back over to face him in his hammock, his eyes reflecting what little light from a distant lantern there was. “What do you want?”

“Sorry to bother you, I just, I’m trying to get acquainted with everyone, and Nott mentioned someone, Caleb –”

Suddenly Marius was struggling upright again, his hands curled tightly around the sides of his swaying hammock. “You won’t tell anyone I said that,” he interrupted, sounding more panicked than Fjord was prepared for. There was a pause, his brow furrowing, suspicious, but there was a pleading undertone as he asked, “Will you?” 

“No, no,” Fjord reassured quickly, because the last thing he needed was for the crew to think he was a rat. “Of course not. Why – who would I even tell?” he chuckled.

“The... Captain?” Marius stumbled over himself, as if that were obvious.

Fjord huffed, partway to an awkward laugh but drawing up sort as the pain of his sides contracting stole his breath away. “Why would I do that?”

“Because…” Marius paused, like he was having a terribly difficult time wrapping his head around Fjord’s questions. “Because I said, I – are you pulling my leg here, Fjord?” he accused.

“No,” Fjord insisted again, regretting ever asking. “I just hadn’t heard the name yet and I didn’t understand why his name came up, if he was someone I should stay out of the way of,” he tried to explain, but he was already backing away, intent on leaving Marius be. “Sorry I asked.”

“Wha– you –” Marius stuttered, if it were possible, even more perplexed. “Stay out the way of? I’ll fucking say. It’s Widogast, it’s fucking Widogast. I said fuck the Captain, okay?” he muttered. “I didn’t mean it, gods I didn’t mean nothin’ by it,” he repeated, more insistent.

Fjord breathed in too sharply, surprised by his own ignorance and forgetting to save himself the pang of discomfort by keeping to short and shallow breaths. “ _Oh_ ,” he said, “shit. I didn’t – oh.”

Marius shook his head, muttering something that sounded a great deal like “ _idiot_ ,” under his breath. “Let’s just forget it all, alright?” he said, already rolling back over.

“Sure, sure,” Fjord agreed, rubbing the back of his neck self-consciously. He made his exit, slow and shuffling and shirt still in hand, without another word. He needed some fresh air badly.

Wincing at each jolt and ache the whole way, Fjord made his way up the stairs to the mid-deck, the cool night ocean air soothing against his bruises and a relief from the oppressive heat. Drenched with sea water and sweat, the cold brush of the wind across his bare skin was a healing magic of its own, and a blessedly familiar one. 

The deck looked empty, as dark as the endless expanse of ocean in every direction save for the familiar tapestry of stars and the silver and rust colored moons suspended overhead, dispersing what little light they could. Coming to a stop leaning against the railing, enjoying the faint salt mist from the waves crashing against the hull, Fjord mopped at his face with his mostly clean shirt before struggling to pull it over his head without aggravating his side any worse.

He didn’t notice the light footsteps approaching behind him. 

“Hello,” a voice managed to startle him, no matter how gentle it came. 

Barely stopping himself from yelping, Fjord spun around, one arm still caught in his sleeve wrong, the fabric bunched around his chest.

Yasha smiled, laughing at him silently. “I hope Beau wasn’t too hard on you,” she said earnestly, her mismatched eyes flicking down to the bruises blooming across his ribs and abdomen, then back to his face, which thankfully no longer displayed the more telling of his injuries. 

“Uh,” Fjord stammered, hurrying to force his arm through his sleeve without grimacing, and smoothing it down his front. “I met Caduceus,” he said by way of answering. 

Yasha’s eyes went a bit wide, her smile dropping away. “Oh,” she said slowly, “I’m sorry. She usually doesn’t go that far.” There was a crinkle to her brow, confusion or perhaps even disapproval in the slight purse of her mouth.

“Yeah, well, I think I pissed her off,” Fjord admitted, leaning his hips back against the rail. If he couldn’t make friends with the quartermaster though, and the Captain was a frightening if tempting enigma, the bosun was a good next pick, so he had hope for making use of the night yet. 

Yasha hummed considerately, stepping up to the railing beside him. “How so?”

“I, uh, got a fistful of her hair,” he summarized vaguely, not wanting to get into the specifics of his decision and humiliation that followed. 

Yasha hummed, nodding sagely. “I doubt that made her angry,” she offered. “Beau appreciates a challenge. Plus, you know, there aren’t really any rules in the ring beside no weapons or armor.”

Fjord pulled in a deep breath, as deep as he could manage, nodding. “I certainly hope that’s the case.”

They lapsed into a comfortable silence for a moment before Yasha finally cleared her throat, stepping back from the railing. “Well, uh, I have to go talk to Orly about, ah…” she hesitated, but Fjord got the sense it was more her feeling awkward than an attempt to avoid anything. “About how long before we reach the coast, so…”

Fjord recalled what Widogast had told Beau, about dropping the Ophelia’s crew near Palma Flora. He appreciated her trying to avoid discussing their situation in front of him. 

Stepping away slowly like she didn’t know how to disengage given Fjord’s silent nod, she motioned over her shoulder. 

“Right, right,” Fjord agreed. “Uh, sorry, I’m still doing the whole names and faces thing – which one’s Orly?”

Yasha blinked at him, pulling in a breath to answer but holding it a moment too long. “The ah, the,” she started, wincing at herself. “The big turtle. The navigator.”

Fjord frowned. “The… what?”

Yasha just shrugged almost equally confused, holding her arms out to mime the size of Orly, Fjord figured, and motioning around herself a bit vaguely and not very helpfully. Forming a shell maybe? “Big turtle,” she repeated. “He has bagpipes,” she offered, certainly not helping. “Please don’t ask him to play them.”

Fjord couldn’t do anything but nod, trying to keep a straight face. “Sure, sure, okay,” he assured her, nodding. “Turtle, bagpipes, right. I guess, ah,” he laughed shallowly, unable to help it. “I guess I’ll know him when I see him.”

“Yeah, that’s a good way to do it probably,” Yasha agreed quietly, almost to herself. Another brief awkward silence. “So, I’m going to go now.”

Fjord gave her a small salute, a smaller smile, watching her turn without a word and cross the deck, her silhouette fading into the surrounding darkness. She was damn frightening, Fjord decided, but he liked her.

With his hips still seated back against the railed, Fjord let himself enjoy the dark and the quiet while he had it, as much privacy as he figured he’d find for the foreseeable future as long as he was tied to this ship and her Captain. 

His eyes drifted toward the back of the ship, the direction Yasha had come from, drawn to the faint, warm glow of a lantern near the stern, illuminating the back of the raised quarterdeck. From his vantage point Fjord could see the ship’s helm and the figure behind it washed in a low warm light, his forearms draped over the ship’s wheel as he looked out into the seemingly infinite night they plunged into bow first.

Widogast.

Conscious of himself looking and recalling the jolt of panic that had swept through him when he’d been caught staring on the deck of the Ophelia, Fjord immediately looked away. But then, Widogast surely couldn’t see him from up there with his only human eyes, comfortably swallowed up in the dark as Fjord was. 

_Caleb Widogast_ , he reminded himself.

Fjord ran the name through his head a few times, tempted to test it on his tongue. To hear how it sounded. 

He’d only just met the man. Hardly knew a thing about him except for Sabian’s fear; except for Feldo’s ghost stories; for the eagerness of the man’s own crew to stay out of his way at the sight of open frustration on his brow; for Marius’ sudden nervousness at the potential of having insulted him. But even in their brief interaction, and for as shit at reading people as Fjord could be at times, he’d seen there was something calculated to Widogast’s brushes with anger, a far too knowing quality that made his threats seem more like tests. 

Fjord could only assume he’d passed to be standing where he stood. 

No matter how Fjord tried, there was no reconciling the mindless violence every horror story and ghost tale had taught him to expect from Captain Widogast with the man he saw at the helm of his ship.

Caleb had foregone his coat, his shirt untucked and plunging neckline loosely laced together down his chest, sleeves rolled up to the elbow and book holsters draped over his shoulders, but not buckled securely in place. Only the top part of his hair was pulled back now, long wisps falling around his face drifting in the same gentle breeze that caught the ends of his shirt. Comfortably disheveled, Fjord thought. He looked soft around the edges.

He looked at peace.

The sort of peace Fjord understood, and sought after, out here on the water, but never quite possessed. He’d been with the pirate vessel for less than a day but… something about it, the threat of danger, the fierce – if aggressive – comradery, the promise of _freedom_ , freedom like he’d never known before... He was beginning to understand. 

Still, Fjord pulled his eyes away. 

_Bad idea_ , that small, oft-overlooked voice of reason in the back of his skull warned him. He would’ve blamed the path his brain was about to wander on the concussion, but, well. He knew himself better. And he’d give Caduceus a little more credit. 

He wasn’t naive. He was plenty aware that he didn’t know the man at all, and what he did know told him he was capable of terrible destruction. Just because he hadn’t killed Fjord yet, cutting him a deal that seemed to swing well in Fjord’s favor… just because Caleb had _looked_ at him like that… well. It didn’t mean shit.

Fjord pushed away from the rails, heading back toward the stairs, back toward his hammock. 

There was still the matter of his survival. A questionable matter at that. But for all his trepidation, Fjord thought he had finally arrived at a decision.

He wanted to know more. About Caleb Widogast. About what he was after.

He didn’t regret the deal that he’d made that put him here, in that moment of desperation. And Fjord suspected that wouldn’t change. 

He hoped that it wouldn’t change.

Not that hoping would change anything.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

On the early evening of the fourth day since taking the Ophelia, two days since sending the seven survivors of the Ophelia swimming the hundred meters to shore a few miles down the coast from Palma Flora, from within his cabin Caleb heard the muffled cry from the crow’s nest that he had hoped to avoid since they’d finally set their course for Darktow.

“ _Sail!_ ”

Not even a full minute after the warning shout, barely time to cap his pen and bury his disappointment, little Bil burst through his cabin door, her eyes wide, face flushed with excitement. Either that or from sprinting the length of the ship to be the one to tell him first.

“Captain,” she gasped. Sybil pointed behind her through the open doorway, words tumbling out without pausing for breath. “Sail spotted over the port bow.”

Closing his spell book and returning it securely to his side, Caleb pushed himself up from his desk, grabbing his coat from the back of his chair. He gestured to the inkwell he’d left open alongside his notes, numerous parchments covered in arcane glyphs and intermittent Zemnian and Common scrawl in the margins. Bil’s eyes were already drawn to them, bright and curious. From the questions she expressed over mess and the meals she occasionally brought to his cabin, shy at first but quickly becoming a veritable barrage, she might as well have asked him to teach her. 

He was really just waiting for her to ask. 

“Tuck these away securely and come find me when you’re done,” he asked, pulling his coat on and stepping around her toward the door. That ink was damn expensive and difficult to come by on the Lucidian Ocean; he didn’t want it spilling if their voyage turned rough.

“Yes, Sir,” she huffed, a serious expression covering her excitement. Caleb left her to it, faintly amused as she gingerly picked up and organized each scrap of parchment like it was precious. 

The deck was awash with available hands climbing up from below, sailors pressed to the rails hoping for sight of the ship while staying clear of the deck hands who worked to hold their course. His crew clustered within the hollowed out mid-deck, some standing on the stairs with just their heads and shoulders out of the hold, eager to hear any orders of their Captain or quartermaster or to take part in a vote if it came to that.

Dropping down the stairs from the quarterdeck, Caleb shielded his eyes from the glare of the sun with his hand. Squinting up the main mast he caught a glimpse of Faeren leaning out over the crow’s nest, more faded tattoos than dark skin by this point in the elf’s aged career, but they were still the most reliable pair of eyes on the ship. 

“Orly,” Caleb called out, flagging the navigator down and calling him over as he moved toward the bow of the ship. Scanning ahead for Beau, he found her already perched high atop the forecastle deck at the bow, spyglass in hand as she peered out over the waves toward the telltale white rise of a sail.

Orly lumbered over to join them at the railing. “Mm, Cap’n,” he drawled in greeting, his one good eye squinting through the sun’s glare off the water.

Caleb narrowed his eyes. The ship that had been spotted was distant, but not as far as he expected, its bow slowly emerging into view from behind the sprawl of small rocky land masses jutting out of the water in the radius of a small island off the port side, mostly dark volcanic rock clawing toward the cloudless sky. 

“How far would you say she’s out?” Caleb asked Beau, shaking his head when she offered the spyglass.

“Maybe three leagues, give or take,” Beau estimated, lifting it again to resume her watch.

“How did they get so close?” he asked, snapping Frumpkin to the railing at his side, his cat currently a white-breasted sea eagle. “Off with you,” he muttered to the familiar, sending him launching into the air to ride the breeze off the water skyward, spiraling once before starting in the direction of the vessel.

“That island strip was between us and them until just a moment ago,” Beau explained, her brow pinched as she closed the eye not pressed to the spyglass. “She’s moving slow, and low in the water. I can’t see much of the hull or gun ports yet but I don’t see any Concord colors on the masts. Probably a silk trader, on its way to Marquet. Awful risky to take her this close to Darktow, though.”

“She’s sitting too low in the water to just be hauling silk,” Caleb muttered, only glancing through Frumpkin’s eyes for an instant before snapping back to himself; Frumpkin was riding high enough to give him a better vantage point, but still much too far away to see more than what Beau described.

Orly hummed to himself, thinking. “We’re not on any m-mm-marked shipping route,” he rumbled, each word dragged out of him slowly, deliberately. “We veered too fa’ west ‘bout two nights back now, to try an’ avoid ‘em. Looks like, mm-maybe they did the same, likely to avoid the likes of us, an’ got caught up in the reefs ‘round here. There’s, sandbars an’ shallows all ‘round here,” Orly explained. 

He pointed to direct Caleb’s eyes to the stretch of ocean extending past the small string of rocky islands, what looked from this distance to be no different, if slightly shallower water. “Very tricky to navigate,” Orly emphasized, each syllable a heavy drawl.

“The course they’re on, and considering ours,” Caleb asked Orly, watching as the nearby vessel cut parallel the Red Horizon’s course, “is it possible to intercept, or are the reefs between us too much a barrier?”

Orly rubbed at his scaled chin, considering it slowly, carefully. “Hard to say,” he admitted, squinting at the water ahead. “We mm-m-might need to pick up a few knots to close the distance, so we’d run a certain risk, but I reckon... “ He paused, nodding his head in a decisive conclusion. “We can find a way through.”

Caleb considered it, turning and leaning back against the railing as he surveyed his crew, all of them watching expectantly, muttering quietly, eagerly amongst themselves. Their recent takes while they’d hunted the schedule, unbeknownst to them, had been light once all injuries and expenses had been paid out. A fat, slow merchant ship on its way to Marquet, one more hefty prize before returning to Darktow, was too tempting an invitation for them to turn away, he knew. And they had new blood with them, since the Ophelia. 

They were always eager to test new blood.

And yet, it meant more risk. “If they choose to fight, rather than surrender,” Caleb muttered to Beauregard at his side, “We’ll spend gods know how long at dock making repairs.” Not to mention veering that far into the wind in pursuit would put them back another day before they could even reach Darktow.

“That’s a risk, yeah,” she agreed, nodding but largely distracted.

That was time he needed to hunt for the Winds of Aeons. And, if Fjord got himself killed in an unnecessary scrap _now_ , something he greatly wished to avoid, it would all have been for nothing unless Caduceus was more convincing to his corpse than Caleb had been to Fjord alive. And he had _tried_ to be convincing. Even still, there were secrets in the sailor’s head about Vandran, perhaps about the nature of his ties to Avantika, that Caleb wanted very much to extract himself.

Caleb snapped out of his calculations as Bil scurried up to stand at the top of the stairs to the forecastle deck, clinging to the rope railing tightly and watching with wide eyes. All of them, the crew, watching with wide, expectant eyes. More than half of them pawing at the hilts of their weapons already. And despite the lot of them, Caleb somehow felt his own eyes drawn to a particular golden yellow pair of them. His palm itching, it felt like Fjord’s gaze weighed heavily from above, there where he clung to the mesh of ratline drawn tight between the side of the ship and midway up the foremast.

He took to the rigging like he preferred it up there, wind tearing at his clothes above the head of the rest.

Caleb looked away.

Beau scoffed to herself at his hesitation. “Half of them are already thinking we should raise the black.”

He very nearly rolled his eyes, turning back toward the distant vessel and steadying himself with a hand on Beau’s shoulder, squeezing once to let her know what he was doing. 

“Half of them would see us raked stem to stern on the reefs for a chance at a little more pocket change,” Caleb grumbled before flashing back into Frumpkin’s eyes, too quickly for Beau to respond with anything he could hear. 

For a moment it was disorienting, feeling the deck rock beneath his feet from where Frumpkin was suspended high in the air. Caleb watched as his familiar narrowed in on the vessel.

“Du _Hurenshon_ ,” he cursed to himself as he examined the ship coming into view from Frumpkin’s vantage point, larger than he’d expected now that he managed to see the rest of the hull, indeed riding low in the water as Beau had identified. “That is too many gun ports to be any _silk trader_ ,” he forced past his clenched jaw, his fingers digging into Beau’s shoulders. “Man-of-war,” he breathed as he flashed black to himself, not quite loud enough for his warning to ripple outward to the nearest of the crew.

“Motherfuck–” Beau stopped herself, collapsing the spyglass and tucking it away hastily in her belt. He released her shoulder. “Have it your way after all, Widogast,” she muttered sideways to Caleb, her eyes raised to the sails, already assessing their options. 

Caleb turned on his heel, his coat snapping around him as he hardened his expression into something that might belay any panic from his crew. “That’s a man-of-war robbing us of our tailwind!” he shouted, scowling at the nervous rumbling that started immediately through the ranks as sure as a shudder through the planks under his feet. He didn’t give it any time to settle in. “Come to starboard,” he ordered, “get us underway!”

“Chop it off on the braces and strike the mainsail and foresail!” Beau lept in, directing the sudden energy above deck as the crew lurched into action. “Marius,” she suddenly snapped her attention toward the half-elf, freezing, the line he’d been tying off still in hand. “I want three more knots on that beast before she even knows we’re turning tail, or I’ll tan your hide this time. I will,” she growled, watching him flinch.

“Orly, take the helm,” Caleb requested more calmly of his navigator, still at his side. “Make a heading west, north-west to keep clear of her. Start us gentle enough it looks like we’re just hugging the reefs. We’ll take the long way around to Darktow.”

“Aye, Cap’n.” Orly nodded, utterly unperturbed, nodding the once and lumbering away.

“They’ve never strayed this close to Darktow before,” Beau muttered darkly, turning back to Caleb. “There’s not a single banner on that ship. You’re telling me they’re sailing without Concord colors now?”

Caleb couldn’t help himself. He looked back out across the water, hand on the railing tightened, the silver rings that cluttered his fingers digging into his skin as he flashed back into Frumpkin’s eyes. Taking one more glance at the three rows of gun decks on the side of the ship navigating slowly through the sandbars to their portside bow. And not a Concord flag in sight, true to Beau’s observations.

He urged Frumpkin to return.

“She’s a hunter,” he said, for whose benefit though, he wasn’t sure.

Beau didn’t disagree. 

Caleb turned, his eyes scanning over the crew, passing resolutely over the pair of golden eyes he’d still _felt_ inexplicably between his shoulder blades. His gaze landed on Bil instead, nervousness the young girl was desperately biting back welling up behind her brown eyes.

“Bil –”

“Yes Captain?” she jumped nearly out of her skin before steeling herself, her jaw going tight.

“You know the new one, the half-orc, Fjord?” he asked, keeping any interest out of his tone.

Her eyes flashed with recognition, nodding. “Yes, Captain.”

“I don’t recall him bringing a weapon over from the Ophelia.” He really should have considered that sooner, not odd for a merchant sailor, but not ideal considering the imminent risk on their horizon. “See to it he’s outfitted properly.”

Her chest puffed up slightly, a proud grin warring with the neutral expression fixed across her face. “Aye, Captain.”

“Then get yourself below decks,” he ordered before she could scurry away, his eyes darting back to the Concordian man-of-war now far enough free from the isle between them for her guns to pose a significant danger if she chose to veer their way. There wasn’t too much cause to prepare for a fight, however; hopefully they would be out of her tailwind and too far to give chase before the larger, heavier ship could navigate itself free of the shallows between them.

Still, the Red Horizon was slightly too close to Darktow, and headed ever so slightly in the wrong direction, to pass itself off confidently as another merchant vessel straying off the popular trade routes. 

Even without having yet raised the black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really do appreciate the kudos and comments! Catch me on twitter @wytchlyghts

**Author's Note:**

> You can follow me on twitter @wytchlyghts for updates re: my posting schedule and more of that good good widofjord content


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